100 years Joseph Beuys: What would be when he would have been a woman? Or without a gender? Women’s voices, men’s voices. Women’s art? Men’s art? Or art and a snail voice? How many pockets Beuys's vest had? What's in Joseph's pocket? Memories, secrets, and clues of provocation? Or conversation/communication for heating each other?
This dance performance illustrates the development of the human body from a single cell through to its ultimate form and focuses on the body in its physicality, complete with all of its strengths and weaknesses. No body is perfect. There is no absolute symmetry, no objective standard. All the same, human beings strive for precisely this; society wants perfection and optimization instead of accepting differences. Extremities is declaration of war using the tools of dance against conformity and superficial ideals that is as visually stunning as it is intimate.
Five times two performers, each group performing for 15 minutes – it all adds up to a very colourful evening. Crisply brief and full of surprises. This is how the Thikwa series face to face works. The theme for this first round of encounters is “contrasts”. An open-air theatre series in the courtyard of the Bockbrauerei located at Fidicinstraße 3. Please note the information on ticket sales and safety regulations.
After the successful start last season, face to face is entering its second round! The principle is based on one to one encounters without the involvement of a director - these are short performance sketches and each scene is about 15 minutes long. Five performances with two performers each, one of them a member of the Thikwa ensemble and the other external, who come together and present their joint consideration of the topic of resonances. Thrown together quickly and stitched together, this is a very diverse evening of work.
In our new series HAUSGEMACHT (homemade), everything is self made: the topic, the casting, the direction - people from the Thikwa ensemble are responsible for everything that makes up an evening theater from the initial idea all the way to the premiere.
Is a plate really just a plate? A dinner party dreams of the leap that makes the impossible possible. The dinner runs into difficulties, the plates really aren’t just plates, but instead a landscape of objects that constantly change and must always be reinterpreted. In their movement, the objects and performers come together to create fantastic images. Let´s jump! Like in a completely new type of circus. But be careful - the objects are fragile and dangerous! Without paying careful attention, everything can end up broken. There is a lot at stake: the shared dream of flying, the dream of daring a new world together - it’s nothing less than that. LEAP ... into the Unknown is just that, the leap into the unknown that is necessary for daring to try to something new.
In a performance somewhere between a realpolitik press conference and a private exercise of power, they encounter the first female German Chancellor as a representative of her ideals, desires and decisions. None of the performers voted for Angela Merkel.
How about winning and losing? And with the things in life in general? Theater Thikwa interviewed Berlin athletes from the Special Olympics. Their stories were the source of inspiration for a colorful mix of scenes. A fast-paced mix of short performances and dance acts can be seen several times a day in front of the Thikwa containers located at the Rathauspassagen – topped by fat beatbox music.
How is it possible to reach an understanding when one person blusters and swaggers, the other person can hardly intervene in a comprehensible manner, a third person claims to understand everything, a fourth person rushes in to help using sign language and a fifth person translates everything into dance? A hopeless mishmash of languages like the Tower of Babel? A hilariously funny look at trying out all the options of (mis)understanding? Or a conciliatory coming together of different techniques of reaching an understanding? Factual, post-factual or as fake news – Thikwa sets off into perceived realities. An encounter of translators, interpreters and know-it-alls with people who speak using body language and sounds.
How does it work with sword and blood, with heroism and murder, with love and betrayal when you are young, blonde and courageous, but also really stupid? Siegfried - a fearless superzero, so-to-speak. But a very sweet one. What is a hero? More than a stunt? Or is it all just Tarzan? The beautiful Siggi is someone that others control through her greed. Profit-oriented, a perfect capitalist. And let’s swap out genteel with “friendly enemy”. We are searching for Siegfried. We are remastering Wagner music with new texts and samples. We are asking whether murder has to be part of the principle of masculinity. And what is it like if you first notice far to late, or not at all, that you’re being used? If you end up being stuck in a black hole that you can never get out of? A piece from a time where you are black-and-white.
A childhood in the broom closet… but I don’t feel any compassion for that now! Said Martin Holzapfel to Torsten Clausen. Or something like that. Is the greatest utopia a world connected by subways? Where they maybe only play Berlin songs? Or are we talking about the profession of the actor while rolling our eyes? And what is actually the difference between plastic and plastic, that is, art and artifice?
Fast and furious, breathtaking, intense. But also painful and filled with love - in dialogue with other people. You burn and ask yourself at some point: and now?
Who was Hölderlin? An underappreciated poet who described the world from his small tower room?
A package is delivered. The contents: body parts that definitely go together, but that don’t function as a whole. A figure of human size stands at the center of the performance. If it is guided, it achieves a personality. If it is studied, an alienation occurs that leads to new abilities. As an object, it provides a metaphorical project surface that invites the viewer to impartial investigation. This can be disturbing, it can lead to unusual situations that cross borders, but also bring new, changeable options into the game. Can we use defects as inspiration for unconventional solutions? Can we bypass defects through cooperations and develop unusual living and coping strategies? A performative encounter of objects and performers with unspoken agreements, cascades of words, the shifting of boundaries and unique rescue maneuvers, accompanied by living jazz singing.
It really isn’t easy being in a body that say “yes”, but also “maybe” at the same time. Vertigo means dizziness - the uncertain ground you end up stumbling all over when you try to relate to others. In Vertigo, people who are purported to be autistic describe themselves and their options for expression. An examination of inner spaces and their periphery with a rap in between, with dance and beat boxing or a manga superhero. The myth of autism: while YOU stare at what is wrong with us, we look to see what is different about THEM. A seriously relaxed breakbeat oratorio of existence.
Eight performers research the sustainability of idols and role models and give us an individual insight into their respective desires and dreamscapes. During the search for very important people, as well as very unimportant people, the idols are outed, updated, ripped apart and let loose against each other. They confront each other and the audience humorously and mercilessly with the utopia of an optimal human being and thus reveal the highly controversial ideas of the ideals and desires for societal acceptance. And, in the background, perhaps the avatars of Elton John, Lady Di, Bud Spencer, PJ Harvey, Michael Schumacher, Otto Waalkes, Angela Merkel, Rune Jarstein or Udo Jürgens might pop up as well.
Applause is the daily bread of the artist who lives on fame and the love of the audience. But what happens when this love is bought? When the audience prostitutes itself? Doesn’t that make the work of the performers (or johns) meaningless? In the end, is it a win-win situation or the end of the free expression of opinion? As long as the barter makes sense for both sides, there is no loser. More is more.The performance collective Monster Truck sets out together with the Thikwa performer Addas Ahmad to examine applause, the manipulation of opinions and the infamous 15 minutes of fame. Again and again and again.
