It must have been 2010 when my parents gave me tickets for the Schaubühne at Lehniner Platz for my birthday. Until then, I’d rarely been to the theater and only seen classical productions. But this time was different. I don’t remember the name of the play, but instead of talking actors, the stage was populated by dancers, in a wild battle against the globalized city, against misery and decay, capitalism and ruin, the bodies threw themselves at each other and into the world, twitching, trembling and convulsing, dancing their way through my retina and into my mind. The piece was staged and choreographed by Constanza Macras and her company Dorky Park. The choreographer, born in Buenos Aires in 1970 and trained at the Merce Cunningham Studio in New York, has since staged countless pieces in Berlin. I’ve almost always been in the audience. Now she’s making a guest appearance at the Volksbühne at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. The play is called “The Hunger” and explores excess. Based on historical events from the novel “The Strange Witness” by Argentinian writer Juan José Saer, the play recounts the experiences of European colonizers in the Rio de la Plata region of South America at the beginning of the 16th century. Cannibalistic rituals are transferred to other forms of greed, from colonialism to the consumer frenzy of today’s capitalism to the hyperproduction of social networks.
Macras effortlessly combines colonial history with the hyper-commercial present and allows her company to express the spectrum of human emotion and horror with every fiber of their bodies. There will be three more performances (18.01., 08.02. & 25.02.2025), tickets are available here — and while the fragile stages of our city gaze into the ugly maw of greed, there could hardly be a better play or a better moment to go to the theater.
Text: Hilka Dirks / Photos: Thomas Aurin
Volksbühne at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Linienstr.227, 10178 Berlin–Mitte; map
“The Hunger” by Constanza Macras, 18.01., 08.02. & 25.02.2025. Get tickets here.
@constanzamacrasdorkypark
@volksbuehne_berlin
