Simone Dede Ayivi:
First Black Woman in Space
First Black Woman in Space
“It’s hard to stop rebels that time travel.” Simone Dede Ayivi and her accomplices are travelling from Afrofutura back to earth in the year 2016. On earth they meet women of color who are dreaming, fighting and passionately building their future. Black women have been attracted to space from very early on: Lieutenant Uhura on the Enterprise and later Mae C. Jemison on the Endeavour space shuttle. Fiction and reality – closely connected. We will only ever get the future which we dare to dream of.
TEXT, PERFORMANCE Simone Dede Ayivi MIS-EN-SCÈNE För Künkel SOUND Katharina Kellermann VIDEO Kathrin Krottenthaler LIght Rosa Wernecke DRAMATURGY Jule Sievert OUTSIDE-EYE Julia Wissert ASSISTaNce Caroline Froelich, Mirjam Pleines GUEST STUDENT Sina Charalabidis COMPANY MANAGEMENT ehrliche arbeit - freies Kulturbüro
Produced by Simone Dede Ayivi and Team in co-production with Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt and SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by Senate Department for Culture and Europe, the Niedersächsische Ministerium for Wissenschaft and Kultur, den Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V. and the Stiftung Niedersachsen. media partner: taz.die tageszeitung
photo © Ute Langkafel
Simone Dede Ayivi developed performances with her accomplices in cooperation with the Sophiensæle, the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt and the Festival Theaterformen. Among others, she directed at the Schauspielhaus Graz and the Theater Oberhausen. In 2022 she received the Tabori Award of the Fonds Darstellende Künste. Ayivi's performances discuss issues of representation, resistance, and community. Her works are curious, primarily interview-based research projects that bring search movements to the stage in a technically playful way, with an open use of theatrical means.
