kainkollektiv

A post-antique theatre feast

Under the title THESMOPHORIA. THE NEW ANCIENT THEATRE, kainkollektiv, together with an ensemble of international artists, invites you not only to reconstruct this festival in a 30-hour durational performance, but to reinvent it for our current situation. Following the story of Demeter, the goddess of earth and fertility, and her daughter Persephone, who was abducted by Hades and taken to the underworld and the world of the dead, we embark on a search for what this mythical story can tell us about ourselves and our current global situation. And along the way, we will share, learn and try out lost gestures and rituals together, which should allow us not only to imagine visions for a “good life together” in the near future, but also to test them out and celebrate them together.

In performances, dance, music, film, rituals and joint workshops – the so-called Schools of Care – these visions come to life and can be negotiated with one another. The audience is not only invited to watch and listen, but also to actively participate, experience and stay where there is a desire and interest to do so. If you like, you can spend the full 30 hours with us and the ensemble in the theater, share time and space together, eat, even spend the night in the theater. However, it is also possible to leave the Thesmophoria – and come back at a later date and thus meet the 30 hours with your own rhythm.

Entry / Exit
30h Durational Performance for watching and listening and active participation. The 30h symbolize three days of 10h each. Below you will find the various entry points to the performance. It is of course possible to exit at any time.

DAY 1: The first 10 hours
1st entry: Arrival and Demeter’s search, 17h
2nd entry: Evening and night over Eleusis, 21h

DAY 2: The second 10 hours
3rd entry, memories of the lost world, 10h

The third 10 hours
4th entry: Rebirth. The ancient world was never white, 17h
5th entry: RETURN OF THE KING’S DAUGHTERS, 21h

Press reviews / guest performance FFT, Düsseldorf

“It’s great, inspiring, special. An art event, invigorating like a wellness weekend. A celebration of community. A frenzy of music. A feminist counter-narrative that captures all the senses and is a gift for all who engaged.”
Dorothea Marcus, deutschlandfunk 31. March 2025 I Link to radio feature (German)

“kainkollektiv brings together international artists who, sometimes solo, sometimes in small groups, take on the role of storytellers, inviting the participants to take part in the various performances and to process their own experiences or memories. In this way, “Thesmophoria” becomes a very personal and individual experience for each participant in this special theater performance.” Claudia Hötzendorfer, Rheinische Post, 31. March 2025

(c) storkfoto

(c) storkfoto

(c) storkfoto

(c) storkfoto

(c) storkfoto

A project by and with: Alexander Steindorf, Amal Omran, Anelisa Stuurman, Bianca Künzel, Catherine Jodoin, Edith Voges Nana Tchuinang, Fabian Lettow, Hannah Busch, Immanuel Bartz, Julie Ilner, Kristina-Maria Peters, Lefteris Papageorgiou, Lydia Polyzoi, Mariette Nancy Nko, Meret Mundwiler, Michael Wolke, Mirjam Schmuck, Nils Voges, Panos Strofalis, Patrick Dollas, Pélagie Alima, Phaedra Pisimisi, Ria Papadopoulou, Richard Behrens, Sara Bigdeli Shamloo, Shams Kassab, Silvia Dierkes, Vanessa Chartrand-Rodrigue and others.

Supported by the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Kunststiftung NRW, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the City of Bochum.

A project by kainkollektiv in co-production with Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, FFT Düsseldorf and tak Berlin.

An installative radio play performance by kainkollektiv the cosmic sisters

In RETURN OF THE KINGSDAUGHTERS kainkollektiv die cosmic sisters open a sound space in the form of a walk-in radio play that aims to bring to the ear the stories and songs of those forgotten/erased “king’s daughters” that our white, male-dominated history of civilization has constantly made disappear since the time of antiquity.

In an entirely acoustic-musical composed soundscape, the voices, narratives, personal accounts soundscapes of cultures erased by Western colonial history appear in an (afro)futuristic docu-fictional counter-journey through times and spaces.

Between pop opera, indigenous chants electro, artists* from South Africa (ANNALYZER), Cameroon (ALIMA), Iran (9T ANTIOPE aka Sara Bigdeli Shamloo Nima Aghiani) Canada/Germany (Vanessa Chartrand Rodrigue) – the cosmic “sisters of Medea” – develop together “Songs of Future Care” and invite the listening audience to join them in a 3D soundspace, to liquefy their own (cultural/national) echo-chambers and to get to the bottom of the sonic question in an acoustic evocation of ghosts and the dead, which always appears on the horizon at the beginning as well as in the continuation of the colonial heritage: WHO OWNS HISTORY? Whose memory counts?

In cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Supported by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Kunststiftung NRW, the NRW KULTURsekretariat, the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media within the framework of NEUSTART KULTUR and the City of Bochum.

On the Future of Hospitality

A cinematic-performative project by kainkollektiv, sputnic, Łukasz Stawarczyk (Teatr Stary Kraków) and partners in Germany and Poland about a real-life utopia of hospitality: a remote mountain hut in Laliki on the Polish border between three countries, which has become a temporary home for more than 1000 strangers. Based on this experience, the project unfolds a documentary-fictional narrative between film and stage – about sharing spaces, stories and encounters. Inspired by the idea of fraternity as lived sisterhood and openness, LA LALIKI LAND invites you to rethink hospitality: as an artistic and political gesture.

Premiere in May 2025 at Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen.

From and with: kainkollektiv, Łukasz Stawarczyk, sputnic, Komuna Warszawa, tak Berlin, Kristina Peters, BAXI Ostrowski, Patrycja Kowanska, Nancy Nko, Paweł Feiglewicz-Penarski

A production of kainkollektiv in coproduction with Ruhrfestspiele, Komuna Warszawa and tak Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg.

Supported by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Foundation for German-Polish Cooperation and the City of Bochum.

based on the novel by Ingeborg Bachmann

“It’s a very old, very strong wall that nobody can fall out of, that nobody can break open, that nothing can ever come out of. It was murder.”

Ingeborg Bachmann’s only completed novel, Malina, tells of the disappearance of a nameless female character: squeezed between Malina and Ivan, who does not return her love, the narrator struggles in a dazzling text to find her place in a male-dominated world – in vain. Driven by her own desire, the feeling of speechlessness as a woman and writer and the traumatic shadows of the Second World War, she heads inexorably towards her end: she is erased both linguistically and symbolically, disappearing into a crack in the wall of the house.

kainkollektiv dedicates his new version of the novel to a feminist search for identity as well as the horrors of fascism, the traces of Nuremberg’s Nazi history and the repression mechanisms of the post-war period.

(c) Konrad Ferstener

(c) Konrad Ferstener

(c) Konrad Ferstener

(c) Konrad Ferstener

(c) Konrad Ferstener

From and with: kainkollektiv (Fabian Lettow, Mirjam Schmuck), Sabrina Bohl, Greta Călinescu, Norbert Böhringer, Nils Riefstahl, Ioana W., Karoline Reinke