50 Grades of Shame

Inspired by Wedekind’s “Spring Awakening” and E. L. James erotic novel “50 Shades of Grey” show She She Pop a series of pictures in which the stage becomes an educational institution and She She Pop and her guests become teachers. Various actors – old, young, children, women and men – stage themselves and the fragmented images of their bodies using live cameras on two large display boards. In changing monstrous or simple presentations and poses, different generations and sexes, real bodies and fantastic births are shown, revealing strategic authenticity and naive imagination. Experienced old people stand next to innocent youngsters.

What does sex mean? What does a woman do? What is a man? What does the child know? The intergenerational faculty of 50 degrees of Shame takes up this challenge. The performers use their own bodies and the shame they have accumulated as illustrative material. The result is an Ars Erotica for the stage – between a modern picture book of sexual enlightenment and a late medieval dance of death.

She She Pop is a performance collective that was founded in the 90s at the Giessen Institute for Applied Theatre Studies and celebrated its 25th anniversary a few months ago. The members of the group are mostly women and work collectively. The performers see themselves as authors, dramaturges and performers of their stage plot. The inclusion of their own autobiography is above all a method, not the purpose of their work.

She She Pop is a performance collective that was founded in the 90s at the Giessen Institute for Applied Theatre Studies. Its members are Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou, Berit Stumpf. The managing director is Elke Weber. The members of the group are mostly women and work collectively. The performers see themselves as authors*, dramaturges* and performers of their stage plot. The inclusion of their own autobiography is above all a method, not the purpose of their work. The result is a form of theatre that is committed to experimentation. The stage is always a place of acute publicity. Decisions are made here, ways of talking and social systems are tried out, speech gestures and social rituals are rehearsed or rejected. She She Pop sees her task in the search for the social limits of communication – and in its targeted and artistic transgression in the shelter of the theatre. The theatre becomes a space for utopian communication. The audience often also receives a concrete attribution and a special function: all of She She Pop’s works are experiments or evidence in their own way that would be invalid without testimony.

She She Pop has been based in Berlin since 1998. The Theater HAU Hebbel am Ufer has been their continuous co-producer and cooperation partner in Berlin since 2003.

Further cooperation partners at home and abroad are: Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt/Main, Kampnagel Hamburg, Forum Freies Theater Düsseldorf, Festival Theaterformen, Münchner Kammerspiele, Schauspiel Stuttgart, as well as Kaserne Basel, brut Wien, Theatre de la Ville /Festival D´Automne de Paris, Festival Kyoto Experiment, Archa Theater Prague, Prager Festival deutscher Sprache, Festival Konfrontationen Lublin.