SEID DOCH LAUT is a site-specific performance in the former Stasi headquarters in Berlin Lichtenberg – today’s Campus for Democracy – about the “Women for Peace” in East Berlin in the 80s. The performances will take place on the 40th anniversary of the peace group. The ideas, thoughts and concepts that moved the women back then are still relevant today: peace and democracy, nuclear rearmament, environmental destruction, civil courage, solidarity and justice. The Stasi headquarters is an emblematic place for Berlin and the entire history of the GDR. In an examination of this place as an instrument of repression, the performance transforms it into a space of democratic exchange. Five performers, all socialized in the GDR, rework elements of the memoirs of these peace women and weave them into an associative, emotional performance that explores the boundaries between personal and historical reality, individual and social responsibility. By making the “Women for Peace” visible, we counter the distorted historical record and state security with a different perspective, showing how women mobilized, dared and did things, reflecting the current women-driven uprisings worldwide.
Artistic director: Alexandra Finder
SEID DOCH LAUT
Real life incidents, those of our characters and those of our performers. A spiral of memories, images, narratives, songs, dances. A performance made of stories. The echo of world history on people’s lives, and vice versa, personal decisions that change the flow of history.
A space of memory is set up inside the heart of a space of repression. We, the five performers and the creative team of SEID DOCH LAUT, occupy this space and transform it. Mixed with the audience and together with it, we unfold a stage action where we may all participate emotionally, mentally, even physically.
History not as an encyclopaedic entry, but as life lived. A performance of political history.
Nancy Biniadaki
November 2022