Stream: Dark Room Revisited

SEXUALITIES, THE GHOST CHOIR 
It is high time that the sexual ones lay bare their points of view, their aims, their tendencies for the whole world to see and counter the horror story of the ghost of sexuality with a manifesto of the body, the space itself. 
 
A chorus of ghosts opens this theatre-film with their request to conceptualise body and mind as inseparably intertwined, to refrain from hiding sexual desire and to aggressively destabilize the familiar, traditional, toxic paths of thought and feeling: to queer the future. Along the way, these undead invite a living person into their utopia of a darkroom that is open to all gender identities, in which truths can only be sensed – into which reality shimmers again and again: light breaks through bliss and lust and reverberating memories and threatening forebodings destroy the idea of a gentle whole. In a highly personal, docu-fictional flashback, the audience witnesses how the invited one made it to the entrance of the queer future in the first place and the path they travelled before.

YONY
Quotations are worse than sperm.
 
Affirming rough edges, Jchj V. Dussel in the text foundation circles around the present through a labyrinth of past and future, placing the decisive parentheses in safe(r) spaces.
Paul Spittler is an independent director and continues his collaboration with Raphaël Amahl Khouri in this project, which already made a glittering splash in the theatre landscape with the world premiere of She He Me at the Kosmos Theater in Vienna. Khouri is playwright and (documentary) theatre artist and contributes a text to DARK ROOM revisited which he performs himself in a cameo appearance. 
 
Texts for DARK ROOM were commissioned in 2018/19 for the Schauspiel Hannover based on a concept from director Ran Chai Bar-zvi. For DARK ROOM revisited the existing work has been overhauled and four new scenes have been created. For the most part the interview material has been removed.

The rehearsals took place at Ufer Studios and the filming at SchwuZ, Berlin as well as in the city space.

Special thanks to Tom's Hotel, Mae Charoen Thai Imbiss and Christopher-Fares Köhler.

Trigger Warning: Nudity, sexuality, linguistic expressions of sexualised violence

Artist Talks:
18/June: with Jchj V. Dussel, Paul Spittler, Banafshe Hourmazdi, presented by Yunus Ersoy
Watch the talk

19/June: with Yunus Ersoy and the actors* Mazen Aljubbeh, Knut Berger, Julius Feldmeier, Elena Schmidt on #ActOut
Watch the talk

Expanded production team:
Clara Puhlmann (1st AD), Filip Piotr Rutkowski (assistant director), Ida Feldmann (assistant dramaturge), Una Jankov (set design & costume supervisor), Tim Boller (best boy lightning), Valentin Milan Grbić (Rekorder Studios, sound recording studio), Ilja Köster (IKSAMPLE Studio, re-recordning mixer), Melanie Schwarzlose (props), Etienne Arnaud (technical coordination), Marta Witak (assistent production manager), Raman Kahlaf (arabic translation), Cornelia Enger (german translation), PANTHEA (subtitling).

Das Festival PUGS IN LOVE – Queer Week 2021 wird gefördert aus Mitteln der Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa. Kooperationspartner*innen sind in diesjähriger Edition: »Missy Magazine«, »Glitter – die Gala der Literaturzeitschriften«, SIEGESSÄULE, SchwuZ und Drama Panorama: Forum für Übersetzung und Theater e.V..

Illustration: © PATU