THESMOPHORIA. THE NEW ANCIENT THEATRE
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.
To make this possible, we would like to communicate a number of tips and recommendations in advance of the performances to help you prepare for your visit to THESMOPHORIA in the best possible way.
Notes
The performance THESMOPHORIA cordially invites all those who are interested and curious to try out the “art of assembly” in the reinvention of an ancient theater festival and, in times of increasing social polarization, to dare to experiment with sharing time, space and rituals between art and care: WELCOME ALL TO THE NEW ANCIENT THEATER!
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 (Friday, 27.09.24 17h to Saturday, 28.09.24 03h)
1st entry: Arrival and Demeter’s search, 17h
2nd entry: Evening and night over Eleusis, 21h
DAY 2: The second 10 hours (Saturday, 28.09.24 03h to Saturday, 28.09.24 13h)
3rd entry, memories of the lost world, 10h
The third 10 hours (Saturday, 28.09.24 13h to Saturday, 28.09.24 23h)
4th entry: Rebirth. The ancient world was never white, 17h
5th entry: RETURN OF THE KING’S DAUGHTERS, 21h
Meals
During the Thesmophoria there will be communal meals (Friday dinner, Saturday breakfast, Saturday dinner), which are part of the production. You are also welcome to bring your own food.
Languages
The Thesmophoria is a multilingual event due to its international ensemble. Wherever necessary, there will be translations into German and English.
Overnight stay in the Ringlokschuppen
For overnight stays in the theater, we provide simple sleeping facilities in the form of a giant beanbag (140x180cm) and a thin blanket. We recommend that you bring a sleeping mat, a sleeping bag and a small pillow, as well as the usual bathroom items. There is a dressing room with a shower that can be used. Unfortunately, the dressing room and shower are not barrier-free.
Accessibility
Barrier-free access to entrance, box office, foyer and stages on the ground floor
barrier-free WC on the ground floor
Free parking spaces directly behind the building
Tickets are available at the Ringlokschuppen: Link
THESMOPHORIA is also coming to Berlin! On November 1st and 2nd we are bringing the theater festival to the tak Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg. Tickets are available at tak: Link
If you have any further questions about the event and accessibility, please contact us at the following email address: info@kainkollektiv.de
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.
RETURN OF THE KINGSDAUGHTERS
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.
DIE WAND
a (movement) choir project with women
after Marlen Haushofer
One morning in the mountains, a woman finds herself cut off from civilization by an invisible wall. The rest of life seems petrified, inaccessible. Only some animals and nature within her suddenly so shrunken world keep her company.
DIE WAND by Marlen Haushofer has long since become a classic that has not lost its relevance today. The ambivalent situation of the main character’s isolation, which means security and threat in equal measure, unfolds a broad spectrum of references ranging from feminist self-empowerment to the current world political situation. Last but not least, DIE WAND conjures up a time after patriarchal, capitalist society.
In an exploration of the novel, the directing team and an ensemble of eleven women have developed a chorus of movement and language that creates a contemporary overwriting of the text. On the border between the individual and the collective, the performers confront their personal “walls.” What leads to the rupture between us and the rest of the world, and what events changed everything from one day to the next? The performers talk about crossing or bumping into geographical and personal boundaries. Of the isolation that can accompany a diagnosis or the loss of a loved one. Some long to break through the wall, others have already left it behind.
From and With: kainkollektiv (Mirjam Schmuck & Fabian Lettow), Catherine Jodoin, Loxo Harazim, Tommaso Tezzele, Silvia Dierkes, Lena Iversen, Andreas Rösler, Franziska Baumann, Maria Buchmüller, Anni D., Katja Firker, Nina Houshmand, Ida Kranz, Natalia Obkhodskaia, Ute Schellenberg, Thembisile Vilakazi, Barbara Walz-Schneider, Caroline Woderich
A production by kainkollektiv. This production was created at the Bürger:Bühne at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden.
Black Eurydice // Schwarze Eurydike // Eurydice Noire
A Counter-Opera
“When Eurydice comes out of the underground, her eyes are blinded by the glare of the sun so much that for a moment, of which she cannot say how long it lasts, she can see nothing but BLACK. A black however that contains everything: all the colors, all the contours, all the events that now pass before her inner eye like a film that runs in fast motion. Just as it is commonly said to happen at the moment of death, when one’s entire life passes by in a fraction of a second right before the gaze breaks for the last time. This is exactly how Eurydice sees everything before her eyes now once again. Only that this moment is not her death, but her rebirth…” (Excerpt from the text of the play)
BLACK EURYDICE, a transnational music theatre production by kainkollektiv, is about the relationship between the European foundation/invention of opera and what was systematically excluded with this foundation: the position of women & the colonial history that began at the same time (around 1600). On the basis of Europe’s first modern opera – Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” (Mantua 1607) – kainkollektiv not only gets to the (under)ground of the aforementioned exclusions, but also designs an (afro-)futuristic, feminist & postcolonial COUNTER-OPERA OF EURYDICE. In “BLACK EURYDICE” five non-European, contemporary women composers – from Iran, Cameroon, South Africa and Canada – have combined Monteverdi’s baroque music from “Orfeo”, considered the first modern opera in Europe, with visionary, contemporary, post-classical and even electronic compositions. A collective feminist composition has created together with kainkollektiv and other European and non-European performers a completely new, multi-voiced vision of the future of music theatre – also and not least as a new questioning of the patriarchal heritage of the cultural institutions of theatre/opera and as an imagination of a different history of its future.
This is in parts visualised in the form of a COMIC OPERA – as a digitally painted and live-performed version of a feminist, docu-fictional “superheroine” story. kainkollektiv’s “superheroine” BLACK EURYDICE, however, is less interested in “saving the world” like her male hero counterparts. Rather, it is about her vision of a transformation of different world experiences.
“The immensely multi-layered, sensually overwhelming music theatre production ‘Black Eurydice’ is a postcolonial, multi-perspectival, feminist counter-draft to the patriarchal, Eurocentric cultural heritage. In around 90 minutes, ‘Black Eurydice’ tells with fabulous playful energy about overcoming the female and non-white silencing in a current parallel universe. However, it is above all an aesthetically highly vivid, blackly ironic musical theatre comic with exciting glimpses of the future.” (Elisabeth Einecke-Klövekorn, Bonn, 17 October 2022)
What other stories can we tell ourselves about the (yesterday’s/tomorrow’s) world that are capable of countering the (colonial) principle of exploitation and destruction that has prevailed for hundreds of years and into our turbo-capitalist present? Perhaps the one that Eurydice brings with her from the underworld, into which she descends silently in Monteverdi’s composition: from the underground, from her shadowy existence, from which we liberate her in BLACK EURYDICE and let her step into the light again. As a polyphonic figure of female experience in a polyphonic interdisciplinary and transnational ensemble of women artists who tell of what happened to Eurydice – from the time of her first forced silencing to our present, in which women’s rights – for example those laid down in the “Istanbul Convention” – are once again being seriously questioned and suspended worldwide. Or as Claudia Hötzendorfer writes in her review of the production in the Rheinische Post: “The message of kainkollektiv from the underworld is clear: society needs a feminine view of the past in order to endure the present and arm itself for the future.”
Languages: German, English & French, with English and German surtitles
From and with: Anelisa Stuurman, Anna Homann, Antje Kuhfeld, Bianca Kunzel, Catherine Jodoin, Edith Voges Nana Tchuninang, Fabian Lettow, Hannah Busch, Henning Streck, Immanuel Bartz, Kerstin Pohle, Melissa Muller, Mirjam Schmuck, Nima Aghiani, Pélagie Alima, Richard Behrens, Sarah Bigdeli Shamloo, Silvia Dierkes, Vanessa Chartrand-Rodrigue, Zdravka Ivandija Kirigin
Funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, 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 tak Berlin and FFT Düsseldorf. A project by kainkollektiv in coproduction with tak Berlin and FFT Düsseldorf.
