VARIETÉ

With Joscha Baltha, Noureddine Elmoussaoui, Stanislav Iordanov, Nadège Meta Kanku, Salome Kießling, Augustin Le Coutour, Liina Magnea, Christian Naujoks, Moritz Nebenführ, Lennart Boyd Schürmann, Kate Strong. Contributions by Achinoam Alon, Kolja Gollub. Borrowing from Carl Einstein, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Emmy Hennings, Hugo Ball et al.

Four former protagonists of DADA meet in a nightclub and cabaret. The more shining moments of their careers and their involvements with avantgarde art lie far behind. Carried away by the enthusiasm of the night, much is consumed and debts accumulate. The matron of the club offers them a deal: To make up for their excesses, they should join forces and produce a variety show together. Will their idiosyncratic memories offer enough entertainment value to achieve the so desperately needed economic success?

Around a fictionalised historical constellation, ‚Bruch‘- reimagines the varieté as a present-day micropolitical asylum and eclectic ritual, where the demonic qualities of modernist self-fashionings can be collectively exorcised. In times of cultural eclipse, cabaret and varieté forms were embraced by a transnational, artistic-intellectual bohème as a precarious laboratory for individualised and ephemeral modes of rupture, mixing commercial entertainment, aestheticised revolt and esoteric experiment.

Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the programme NEUSTART KULTUR, Fleetstreet, Hamburgische Kulturstiftung, Rudolf Augstein Stiftung.