29.5.–9.6.2024 Cologne, Düsseldorf and Mülheim an der Ruhr
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EXPECT A TIGER

Within the dark space stands a brightly lit kitchen with a long table in front of it for the audience. On the menu: four courses together with stories about the hard work in the kitchens of top restaurants. How can the evening be made unforgettable and everyone’s efforts be recognised in equal measure?

09.06., 20:30–23:00 Schedule

no seats availabe at the moment

11.06., 20:00–22:30 Schedule

no seats available at the moment

12.06., 19:00–21:30 Schedule

no seats availabe at the moment

Registration required at expectatiger[a]impulsefestival.de.

Venue will be given when booking.
Language: German

© Robin Junicke
EXPECT A TIGER © Robin Junicke
© Atacan AK / subbotnik

The tiger is in every restaurant, prowling among the kitchen staff. One tiny moment of carelessness and it will pounce: if something goes wrong, the perfect choreography in which everyone knows what they have to do will be out of time. The pressure, already huge, will become unbearable. Everyone knows this moment will happen every evening, but no one knows when.

Nadja Duesterberg is an actor and cook. In this performance she makes visible what otherwise remains hidden: how much work it takes to give your guests a great evening – either in the theatre or in a restaurant. At the same time, she also shows how much potential such a gathering has: in all those present, in every move, in every gesture. Cautious connections are formed. Strangers become allies, colleagues become friends and the public become a community.

Credits

Concept, Direction, Text, Food, Performance: Nadja Duesterberg
Composer: Svea Kirschmeier
With: Nadja Duesterberg, Kornelius Heidebrecht, Lisa Hinz, Svea Kirschmeier, Zeynep Topal, Oleg Zhukov
Dramaturgy: Felizitas Stilleke
Dramaturgical Consultant: Anna Bründl

This production was created as part of the project HAUS/DOMA.
Artistic Direction, Scenography, Music: subbotnik
Management: Béla Bisom/transmissions
Assistant: Lisa Hinz
Production Manager: Nora Vollmond
Dramaturgy: Anna Bründl

Production

Funded by the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funding from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of NEUSTART KULTUR, #TakeHeart Residency Funding at the FFT Düsseldorf and the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Biographies

Anna Bründl is a dramaturg and curator. She has worked across Germany for international festivals including SPIELART and DANCE in Munich in a variety of roles, was Artistic Assistant at HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts Dresden from 2010 to 2018 and Dramaturg and Project Co-ordinator of the new theatre alliance vier.ruhr in Mülheim an der Ruhr from 2019 to 2021. She works as a freelance dramaturg together with subbotnik, KGI – Büro für nicht übertragbare Angelegenheiten and the performance and media collective LIGNA. Since 2023 she has also been Dramaturg for the Impulse Theater Festival.

Nadja Duesterberg was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1983. She has been working as a freelance actor/performer in North Rhine-Westphalia and in Berlin since 2009 and as a chef since 2007. She was awarded the Cologne Performer’s Prize in 2017. She devised her first original performance in 2019 as part of ‘Homesick’ at FFT Düsseldorf (conceived by Michikazu Matsune). This was followed the same year by an international co-production by Jun Tsutsui with the Kyoto Art Center at FFT Düsseldorf. Nadja Duesterberg asks: Who is visible where and why? Where is our story? And who is telling it? In 2020 the #TakeCare residency of the Fonds Darstellende Künste gave her the opportunity to research patriarchal, misogynist and discriminatory structures in her everyday work as an actor in the independent performing arts. In 2022 she began a second residency at FFT Düsseldorf: ‘Expect a Tiger’ is a performative research project about dining.

Lisa Hinz came to Cologne after graduating from high school in 2021 and completed federal voluntary service here in the Press and Public Relations Department at the COMEDIA Theater. Since the summer of 2022 she has worked freelance as an Assistant Director and Project Manager in the independent theatre sector in Cologne and Düsseldorf, for the COMEDIA Theater, subbotnik and the Sommerblut Festival, among others.

Svea Kirschmeier is a freelance musician, actor and performer from Cologne. Since 2018 she has played and composed for venues including the COMEDIA Theater Cologne and JES Stuttgart and also with the independent performance collective subbotnik. With the production ‘Zuhause’ by the performance collective subbotnik she won the Cologne Theatre Prize 2021. In 2022 she was nominated for the FAUST Theatre Prize with an acrobatics and dance production by the theaterkohlenpott Herne and with other productions she has been invited to festivals across Germany, notably the Augenblick mal! festival in Berlin.

Felizitas Stilleke is a freelance dramaturg, artist and curator. She works as a festival dramaturg (Berlin Theatertreffen 2018, Impulse Theater Festival 2017 and FAVORITEN 2014 as Co-Director) and directs performance conferences, such as Branchentreff 2019–2021 and B.A.L.L. 2022, as well as working as a production dramaturg in Berlin, North Rhine-Westphalia, Zurich and the Netherlands. She holds a B.A. in German Literature/Narrative Studies from Bochum and an M.A. in Cultural Poetics from the University of Münster. In 2020 she started a series of podcast sessions at Ballhaus Ost entitled ‘The Mother in Me is the Mother in You’, in which she readdressed the discourse around the issue of not/not yet/no longer/perhaps/becoming a mother in conversation with friends. In all her work she is concerned and motivated by the search for radical intersectional/feminist change and the cultivation of collective knowledge.

The ensemble subbotnik operates on a project basis and is consistently extended by new artistic positions. It has developed artistic projects in North Rhine-Westphalia continuously for more than ten years. As theatre-makers and musicians, its members work where performative storytelling meets concerts and live audio drama. Their works have been seen at the Forum Freies Theater Düsseldorf, studiobühneköln, the Freies Werkstatt Theater Köln, Schauspiel Köln, the Theater an der Ruhr in Mülheim, Schauspiel Leipzig and Nationaltheater Mannheim. Their first award was the City of Düsseldorf’s Development Prize in the Performing Arts in 2013 for ‘Die Sehnsucht des Menschen ein Tier zu werden’. Three of their works were then presented at the NRW theatre festival FAVORITEN in 2014. The trilogy ‘Götter – Helden – Städte’ gained several prizes and festival invitations: WESTWIND 2016/ 2017/ 2018, Spurensuche Berlin 2018 and Augenblick mal! 2019. subbotnik won the Cologne Theatre Prize 2021 for the production ‘Zuhause’. Their most recent work ‘Lyriks’ has been invited to Augenblick mal! 2023.

Nora Vollmond works together with artists and collectives between Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia as a producer, dramaturg, performer and speaker. Nora has worked regularly with the theatre collective subbotnik (32nd Cologne Theatre Prize, Augenblick mal! 2023) since 2020. As part of the #TakeHeart Residency at PACT Zollverein, she investigated transgenerational power relations and family narratives. Nora is currently a participant in the Academy for Performing Arts Producers #6 run by the Alliance of International Production Houses.