Where are we when we are not there? AFTERLIVES is a collaboration of the collective Henrike Iglesias with the Thai collective Miss Theatre that includes artist Miss Oat and many other collaborators. This interactive, multi-media performance will take place in Vienna and Bangkok at the same time: Together with the two audience groups, connected via smartphones, the performers will set out to find queer afterlives.
In AFTERLIVES, the theory of the multiverse, based on principles of quantum theory, serves as a metaphor, a narrative device and a source for inspiration to speculate about one’s own life after death, queer politics of dying and alternative forms of living together. Audiences will gather in theatre spaces in Bangkok and Vienna and interact with the performance using their own smartphones. The phone will thus become a portal connecting spaces and spectators. What parallel realities are imaginable? Where are we when we are not there? How do we need to face one another to feel connected? And where can we get together to care and mourn for one another?
Henrike Iglesias is a theatre collective based in Berlin and Basel and existing since 2012. The crew includes Leo G. Alonso, Malu Peeters, Marielle Schavan and Sophia Schroth. Together and in smaller constellations as well as with various collaborators, they devise performances, installations, parties and much more. For Henrike Iglesias, phenomena of popular culture and the mass media mirror social situations and grievances, so they set out to shed a light on them from feminist perspectives. In their work, they like to use technical means and devices in narrative, interactive and poetic ways, trying to find out how they affect how we all live together on a daily basis. Henrike Iglesias and brut Wien enjoy a continuous collaboration. After OH MY (2019), FRESSEN (2020), UNDER PRESSURE (2021) and most recently FLAMES TO DUST (2023), AFTERLIVES marks Henrike Igleasias’s fifth appearance at brut.
Miss Theatre from Bangkok is a collective of performing artists who tackle queer themes, marginalised communities and gender policy. Based on personal experiences, they experiment with narrative devices to challenge convictions and fend off patriarchal ideologies.
Pathipon (Miss Oat) founded Miss Theatre and H0M0HAUS, a festival for diversity. Her work explores queerness, individuality and politics and challenges the norms of Thai performing arts. H0M0HAUS made its successful debut in 2024 and will continue in 2025. wurde 2024 erfolgreich ins Leben gerufen und wird 2025 in die zweite Runde gehen.
Rosa Wernecke is a video and lighting designer. She is part of the feminist performance/media art collective Swoosh Lieu whose work has been presented at, among other places, the Stückemarkt of the Theatertreffen in Berlin, the Impulse Festival and the festival Politik im freien Theater. Wernecke is a co-founder of the association Gefährliche Arbeit that provides networking and advanced training for FLINTA technicians and designers. She was an artist in residence at the Goethe Institute's Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto in 2018, the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul in 2021/22 and the Cité des Arts in Paris in 2023/24.
Henri Maximilian Jakobs studied electric bass at the Richard-Strauss-Konservatorium in Munich and is a singer and bass player with the band TUBBE, as part of which he published three albums. He also toured as a live bass player with Sookee, The toten Crackhuren im Kofferraum and others. In 2019, Jakobs was a protagonist of Christina Wolf's podcast Transformer that won the German Audiobook Award in the podcast category. Since 2020, he has been active as a theatre musician and worked for Schaubühne Berlin, Theater an der Parkaue and Schauspiel Hannover, among others. In addition to being a musician, Jakobs is also an author; his debut novel Paradiesische Zustände was published by KiWi in June of 2023.
Concept, costume design, dramaturgy, digital interaction, lighting design, performance, production management, sound design, set design & text Leo G. Alonso, Henri Maximilian Jakobs, Pathipon (Miss Oat), Thongchai Pimapunsri, Nicha Puranasamriddhi, Marielle Schavan, Sophia Schroth, Rosa Wernecke Production management on tour Maxine Devaud/oh la la – performing arts production Original concept Pathipon (Miss Oat), Henrike Iglesias (Leo G. Alonso, Malu Peeters, Marielle Schavan, Sophia Schroth), Anan Fries Contributions to directing & dramaturgy Felix Toni Giesler Technical direction & set design Bangkok Pornpan Arayaveerasid, Rueangrith Suntisuk (DuckUnit) Stage management Bangkok Surat Kaewseekarm Graphic design Bangkok Matus Kaewdum (Cerebrum_art.original) Coding & creative engineering bleeptrack Stage tailoring Amancay Ballesi Outside eye Berlin María F. Giacaman Hasbún Production management Berlin ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro Press & publicity Berlin Franziska Janke Translation Naomi Boyce
A production by Henrike Iglesias in co-production with Sophiensæle Berlin, brut Wien, FFT Düsseldorf and ROXY Birsfelden
Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the German Federal Government’s Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Berlin Senate Department of Culture and Social Cohesion
brut nordwest
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
Content notes
The performance addresses death, funerals, grief and suicide.
The performance uses theatre fog. There is one scene involving loud techno sound.