Gritty Glamour takes us into the Berlin night, to the backstage area of a club in Kreuzberg. During a solidarity event, four artists are getting ready for their stage performance: Maria Sumak, golden voice of electro and queen of the nightlife; Blue Collar, rapper/musician and poet; Molina Puig, dancer and it-girl; and Greta Dietrich, West Berlin’s grande dame of drag chanson. While one performer at a time is on stage, the performer’s constellations and relationships behind the stage change. While they wait, they act out stories from their lives and engage with their respective understanding of community, sex, love, diaspora, family, and the relationship between their every day and their stage persona.

All of the performers are artists and figures from Berlin’s nightlife. The play interrogates the visibility of queer post-migrant artists and the role racist attributions play in a dominantly white queer scene. The artists’ diverse artistic forms of expression and perspectives are celebrated in a night of performance, juxtaposed in dialogue with one another and fictionalized. Based on interviews, the experiences and stories each participant brings with them are brought to the stage, reflecting a part of the life of the protagonists in Berlin. A life in contradictory worlds, often very close to precarity, where the exploration of boundaries, of sexuality, is part of the norm and the individual self is in a constant process of negotiation. The performers slip into the roles of their counterparts, take on their identities – and in an equally interdisciplinary involvement with music, text, video, and dance, they also keep re-negotiating the form of what happens on stage.

A bold piece that gives courage.
taz / In the Spin Cycle / 03.13.2015

Credits

Directed by: SIMON(E) JAIKIRIUMA PAETAU | Written by: DANIEL MARTINS, SIMON(E) J. PAETAU, IURY TROJABORG, MAD KATE, AÉREA NEGROT, DIETER RITA SCHOLL, JAO MOON, INSA PETERS | Text rewrite: LAURA PAETAU, SIMON(E) J. PAETAU, IURY TROJABORG, MAD KATE | Dramaturgy: IURY TROJABORG | Stage & Costume Design: MICHAELA MUCHINA | Light Design: CATALINA FERNÁNDEZ | Video: LIZ ROSENFELD | Cast: MAD KATE, JAIR LUNA, AÉREA NEGROT, DIETER RITA SCHOLL. In previous performances: BLACK CRACKER | A production by: KULTURSPRÜNGE AT BALLHAUS NAUNYNSTRASSE, A NON-PROFIT COMPANY. FIRST PRODUCTION SUPPORTED BY THE HAUPTSTADTKULTURFONDS.

Reviews

The piece poses the question of to what extent categories and trends such as race, postcolonialism, and neoliberalism have an influence on queer nightlife in Berlin. Not easy topics, but [director] Paetau approaches them not only in an extremely witty but also very entertaining way.
Siegessäule / Behind the Scenes / 03.05.2015

As the show moves between backstage conservation, dreamlike solos and ensemble vignettes, it tackles everything from the challenges of house-hunting in Berlin to the city’s best meat (ahem) to the performers’ sexual preferences to darker stories of abuse and rejection. Director Simon(e) Jaikiruma Paetau – working with a text that draws heavily from interviews – has done a canny job, often blurring the line between performer and character.
The Berliner / Are you a man or a woman? / 28.04.2015