People are obsessed with ideas – but also with things. For the Monologue Festival, She She Pop follows the idea of ownership, which has become an eerily important subject in people’s coexistence: if you have nothing, you have to hire yourself out. But even those who own too much, so people say, become obsessed by it. There it is: the community of the possessed.
She She Pop steps forward to elicit a new meaning of “theatre without an audience”. As proposed in Brechtian Lehrstück theory, those on stage try different attitudes and give speeches. In the Possessed monologue, a polyphonic monologue can be heard, whereby the community has its say. A community that is concerned about ownership and the resulting distortions. In speech, it confirms itself, yet establishes that it is at odds with itself.
by She She Pop (Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou und Berit Stumpf)
artistic advice Ruschka Steininger
collaboration text Ravenna version Agata Tomšič
PR ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture
communication Tina Ebert
production Tina Ebert, Aminata Oelßner, Elke Weber
company management Aminata Oelßner, Elke Weber
a production She She Pop and Theaterdiscounter – Monologue Festival 2016
founded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin
duration 45 min
translation by Abbagnato Michela, Barbaro Asia, Fusco Marianna, Lazzarin Giorgia, Lu Hui Jing, Maccaglia Giorgia, Fenini Martina, Lio Miriana, Mazzella Maria, Dalla Pozza Chiara, Pozza Sandy, Presti Angela, Ramelli Giulia, Salvatore Marta, Sangiovanni Emma, Soldani Irene under the supervision of Prof.ssa Adele D’Arcangelo, Università di Bologna – Dipartimento di Interpretazione e Traduzione
She She Pop is a Berlin-based feminist performance collective that emerged in the 1990s from the Giessen Institute for Applied Theater Studies.
The members see themselves as authors, dramaturges and performers of their stage action. The inclusion of their own autobiography is above all a method, not a purpose of the work. She She Pop practices a form of theater that is committed to experimentation. They use the stage as a place of acute public: here decisions are made, ways of talking and social systems are tried out, speech gestures and social rituals are rehearsed or discarded. She She Pop sees its task as a search to find the social limits of communication – and to go beyond the protective space of the theatre, in both specific and artistic terms. The theatre is turned into a space for utopian communication. The audience, too, is often given a special function: all of She She Pop’s works are experiments or demonstrations of evidence that would be invalid without spectators.
She She Pop celebrated their 25th anniversary in 2018. Members are Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou, Berit Stumpf, and Elke Weber. Former group members are Fanni Halmburger, Claude Jansen, Katharina Oberlik and Anja von Steht.
The international production house HAU Hebbel am Ufer has been their continuous coproducer and cooperation partner in Berlin since 2003. In addition, there is a wide network of cooperating houses in Germany and abroad: Munich Kammerspiele, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Schauspiel Leipzig, Kampnagel Hamburg, Forum Freies Theater in Dusseldorf, Mousonturm Frankfurt / Main and Kaserne Basel, brut Wien, Theatre de la Ville / Festival d’Automne de Paris, Festival Kyoto Experiment Archa Theatre Prague, Prague German language Festival and the Konfrontationen Festival Lublin and Festival delle Colline Torinesi Turin / TPE – Teatro Piemonte Europa.