SUMMER UP 9, Theater festival for assistants and up-and-coming artists

New handwriting - this season at JOiN! As the first Germany-wide festival by assistants for assistants, SUMMER UP offers a platform for young talents in the performing arts who work as performing arts who are employed, freelance or self-employed.

Organized by assistierenden-netzwerk

Location
Nord

in June 2025

Curation
Naomi Kean, Goldie Röll, Maren Schäfer, Jessica Weisskirchen & Lara Yilmaz

Performances

More details below

Friday, June 20, 2025

2 pm: Festival Opening

2:30 pm: "Strukturen und Menschen" (Structures and people)

by and with Hannah Helbig

Based on the performer’s own experiences as a trainee director, the lecture performance addresses the functioning of power and hierarchy in the theater from a radically personal perspective. With the help of diary entries and voice messages to her best friend, the performer recalls her time at the Berliner Ensemble. The level of the individual story points to something larger, to a system: Why do certain authoritarian practices and dynamics seem to be completely accepted in the institutionalized theater business? Why are questions of emancipation and pluralism negotiated on the stages of this country, while it often looks completely different in the production process?

With “Structures and People“ – Diary of an Intern 2.0, Hannah Helbig is once again presenting the piece with which she won the Audience Award at Körber Studio 2024 at the SUMMER UP Festival.

7:30 pm: "Ein bisher unbenannter Tag im Jahre 1987" (An as-yet unnamed day in the year 1987)

Guest performance of the LICHTHOF Theater Hamburg
sponsored by Claussen-Simon-Stiftung and Hamburgische Kulturstiftung
with Hannah Dalmeyer and Yves Zahnd

The year is 1987, climate change is already showing its first effects, but is not yet recognized as such. The Cold War is in its final stages and change is in the air in a divided Germany. In this very year, on August 31, an interview takes place that will change the course of history. On that day, Reinhold Messner and Thomas Gottschalk sit opposite each other. And for the first time, Messner talks publicly about his Yeti sighting on Nanga Parbat. Messner expects to become the target of ridicule. But nothing of the sort happens... In a mockumentary theater evening, the Institute for Leisure Research tells of an alternative history in which a hairy giant single-handedly brings climate change to its knees.

Director / stage management / props Verena Rosna
Stage / light / live video Jakob Boeckh
Music / sound Philipp Kreb

The guest performance at the SUMMER UP Festival is made possible through a diffusion grant from the Association of Independent Performing Arts Hamburg (DfDK).

9:30 pm: Get together

Saturday, June 21, 2025

1:30 pm: "Das ist Esther" (This is Esther)

Guest performance of the Stadttheater Ingolstadt
with Lisa Fedkenheuer as Mary Ann

The class (group) is waiting for a visit from a Holocaust survivor, but Esther Bauer is late. Instead, a nervous young woman enters the classroom and introduces herself as the granddaughter of the survivor. She has photos and audio recordings in her luggage documenting the stations of her “Granny” and so Mary Ann hesitantly takes over Esther's task and begins to tell the story. She talks about Esther's childhood and youth in Germany, her fate as a concentration camp prisoner, her survival and her emigration to America. Mary Ann speaks of her grandmother with great respect, but also with the amazement of her grandchildren's generation, for whom much of the Third Reich era must seem unimaginable. She repeatedly draws concrete comparisons in order to visualize the situation at that time.

The piece addresses the transience of contemporary testimony and poses the question of how remembrance can take place. Mary Ann l leaves the class with a whole life story: this is Esther.

Talkback session after the show

5:30 pm: "ALL YOU CAN EAT"

Guest performance of the Thalia Theater
with Oda Thormeyer and Tim Porath

The way to the heart is through the stomach – and capitalism makes the gut poor. Welcome to the last great supper – this time for real. But without Jesus, the Lord is dead, nowadays people believe in money. Preferably in particularly large quantities. More and more money and more and more new product after product after product... When the last tree is cut down, the last river poisoned, the last fish caught, you will realize that... oh oh!

8 pm: "Gastmahl" (Banquet)

Guest performance of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
with Julieta Figueroa, Ralph Heidel, Sua Jo, Kangyoon Shine Lee and Marco Merenda

Banquets were an integral part of social and political life in ancient Greece. Based on a ritualized procedure, the participants – exclusively men – indulged in intoxication. Plato’s “Symposium” tells of a banquet held in honor of the god Eros, at which various concepts of love were discussed. Based on Plato’s writing, “Gastmahl” attempts a feminist and queer reinterpretation of this social practice: in four stages (“Longing”, “You & I”, ‘Community’, “New Affinities”), various forms of community are discussed and made tangible in today’s world. Texts from Plato’s “Symposion”, current non-fiction literature, opera arias arranged by multi-instrumentalist Ralph Heidel and dance are just as much a part of the interdisciplinary music theater as the performers' personal accounts. Interactive parts and recurring ritual elements invite the audience to actively participate in the action and become part of the community.

Director Elli Neubert
Room & Light Jakob Boeckh
Lighting Lucas Goiny / Nicolai Roloff
Costume & mask Johanna Winkler
Dramaturgy Carolin Müller-Dohle

9:30 pm: Get together

Follow us!

SUMMER UP 9

Performances

Friday, June 20, 2025

Saturday, June 21, 2025