KIDNAPPED – A PROLOGUE + RETINA MANEUVER

KIDNAPPED - A PROLOGUE

RODRIGO BATISTA & MARIANA SENNE / MESTIZO ARTS PLATFORM, WIPCOOP & CAMPO 

  EN      THEATER    40min

We are all trapped in our neoliberal ‘freedom’. Ideologies, identities, technologies, political systems, predatory relationships, competition, capital, and structural inequalities: these are our hostage-takers.

In the form of a variety theatre, Rodrigo Batista & Marianna Senne want to shake us awake from our contemporary hypnosis. Their work in progress throws fragments of our political current events – in the form of theatre, video, music, propaganda and tragedy – into a blender. They collect all these issues and challenges onto one mixtape: an emotionally layered compilation in which scenes, tracks, and themes take us along with them.  

Can theatre be a wake-up call for our collective Stockholm syndrome? How do we awaken from a deeply rooted colonial and capitalist subconscious?  

Rodrigo Batista is a Brazilian theatre director, actor, and teacher who lives and works in the Netherlands and Belgium. His research covers a broad spectrum of philosophy, politics, film, and dance; in his practice, the importance of political statements, direct and explicit messages aimed at world politics, is paramount – or rather: Rodrigo wants to radically translate the ‘here’ and ‘now’ into theatre.  

Mariana Senne (São Paulo, Brazil) is a theatre maker and performer from Berlin. Her current work revolves around intercultural theatre practices, in which she put new forms of staging front and centre, with a focus on feminism. She has collaborated with Claudia Bosse/Theater Combinat, Joachim Robbrecht & De Warme Winkel Groupe, Karin Beier, and since 2022 with Rodrigo Battista. Together they have renewed their methods of creation, similarly to their collective theatre-making in São Paulo,
 

RETINA MANEUVER  

PING-HSIANG WANG / TATWERK | PERFORMATIVE FORSCHUNG 

  EN     THEATER, LECTURE PERFORMANCE    50min

Ping-Hsiang Wang is obsessively fascinated with Alicia Keys’ pop song Girl on Fire. To his great frustration, he no longer remembers where he was when Keys released the song in 2012. A fanatical search through his digital archives yields a photo from his Facebook page confronting him with his past.  

Wang didn’t have a classical artistic education, but he did stand out during the last edition of WIPCOOP (Work In Progress Coöperatie). In this lecture-performance, he weaves together various media (including text, sound, livestreaming video, objects, and documents) into a layered piece full of unexpected plot twists. For example, the audience initially thinks that the piece will be about his lover, but it soon unfolds into a reflection on the artist’s own political context.  

Digging deeper, Wang recalls his time in Taiwan ten years earlier through a queer lens. He astutely refutes simple narratives such as ‘them versus us’. He always seeks out nuance and creates a cleverly constructed campy performance and choreography, full of pop culture references. What memories can he still save?  

Ping-Hsiang Wang is a Berlin-based theatre director originally from Taiwan. His signature aesthetic focuses on transforming ordinary everyday landscapes into fantastical digital realities. His work envisions narrative as a full sensory experience, and combines multiple performative elements using text, sound, movement, livestreaming video, objects, documents, and scenography.