Program
8 premieres under the heading COMMON SENSES shift perspectives and reflect the status quo of our social interactions. Guests from philosophy and science stimulate our thinking with impulses. You can also expect a “kiosk of unfulfilled wishes”, a floating light-space installation, bar, music, DJs and appetizers in the Discourse Kitchen.
Audience members can experience several short monologues and specials in close succession each evening – we recommend day tickets for the best festival experience.
In addition to the festival trailer, you can find Byung-Chul Han’s opening speech as a video as well as selected press reviews of the festival here.
9 Nov
In August 2022, the Berlin Costa Compagnie conducted research in Eastern Ukraine. In Kharkiv, as well as at the near front, they interviewed four women who volunteered for the armed struggle against the Russian attack and the autocratic system that came with it. The examination of the material raises the question: What would we do?
Zhenya is a human rights lawyer and now a drone pilot in a reconnaissance unit. Helena is a documentary film director and now a medic in a combat unit. Oksana and Tatyana, two press officers, report from the front lines with their cameras. Within the framework of the Monologue Festival, an Ukrainian actress - Anna Mrachkovska - deals with the interviews for the first time and creates a intermedia monologue, based on the thoughts of the interviewees and the participating artists, which attempts to approach this radical present in a performative, cinematic and musical way.
What values and systems are defended in Ukraine beyond one’s own life and country? Would one give their life to fight for democracy and freedom? How what does it mean to perform a theater monologue about these questions 2,000 km away in Berlin, while friends and relatives at home are involved in acts of war?
TRIGGER WARNING: Description of acts of war in images, text and sound.
A previously published announcement and the title have been revised in light of current events. Further adjustments are possible.
COSTA COMPAGNIE was founded by Felix Meyer-Christian as a collaboration of interdisciplinary artists. The works of the past years combine documentary, performative, cinematic and choreographic methods with an essayistic and multi-perspectival narrative. The group’s focus of several works has been global war- and conflict zones, processes of political transformation and the human within. For their multimedia and often immersive productions, they conduct interviews with the people on site, including in South Sudan, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, the USA, Russia, Thailand, Japan and most recently in Eastern Ukraine. Their documentary feature film “Independence” received the awards for “Best Documentary” as price of film criticism and “Best Music in a Documentary” at the 2023 Max Ophüls Prize Film Festival. www.costacompagnie.org
Writer/Performer Anna Mrachkovska Writer/Director/Research On Site Felix Meyer-Christian Director of Photography Thomas Oswald Video Editor/Dramaturg Marichka Lukianchuk Costume Designer/ Artistic Collaborator Zoë Sebanyiga Coproduction TD Berlin as part of Monologfestival 2023 Peromoted by the four-year festival funding of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion Berlin
10 Nov
11 Nov
12 Nov
16 Nov
17 Nov
18 Nov
19 Nov
