World premiere: 30 October 2025
Further dates in autumn will be announced shortly.
Inspired by Isherwood’s semi-autobiographical novel “Goodbye to Berlin”, the research work “Watching Weimar Dance” by Kate Elswit and the legacy of prominent dancers of that time such as Anita Berber and Valeska Gert, the show explores an amoral universe of intoxicating spectacle. It unfolds as “a nightmarish hall of mirrors of political and social anxiety“: a cabaret.
Set in a liminal space that moves back and forth between the turbulent Germany of the Weimar Republic and the present, Goodbye Berlin confronts overwhelming contradictions, paradoxes, and apocalyptic visions with the palatable forms of a pure spectacle.
As the world spins dangerously forward, this cabaret becomes home to subversive and counter-cultural rituals. These rituals are in turn our artistic repertoire, our staged patrimony.
But are they only good for suspending our machinations about the rise of reactionary politics in an entertained bliss? Or can they actually counteract the depressed feelings of our inability to act and spark a mobilization against increasingly encroaching powers?
Is pleasure still possible, not instead of hope, but in addition to it?
Goodbye Berlin is a journey through the fascinating aesthetics that aim for ecstasy and fantasize with death.
Concept, direction & choreography Constanza Macras
By and with Candaş Baş, Alexandra Bódi, Emil Bordás, Campbell Caspary, Chloe Chua, Oksana Chupryniuk, Deborah Dalla Valle, Fernanda Farah, WooSang Jeon, Moritz Lucht, Thulani Lord Mgidi, Miki Shoji, Shiori Sumikawa, Steph Quinci
Dramaturgy Carmen Mehnert, Tamara Saphir, Lili Hering
Stage design Simon Lesemann
Costume design Slavna Martinovic
Music Robert Lippok
Lighting Kevin Sock
Assistant director Jonas Pfeifer
Photo © Thomas Aurin
A coproduction with Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz
