What happened in 2022?

Sitting at my little wooden desk by the window in the weird 14-degree Berlin weather, sick with the flu and rejecting any possibility of celebration, I have finally had the chance to "take stock".

2022 began for me with a long bus ride to Portugal, a type of 'holiday' to visit friends and colleagues, which was punctuated by different forms of trauma over events of the last years. By the time I got back - February 16th - I had a week in Berlin to look around at what was happening, before things would change completely again.

The period after that week is something of a blur. 3 weeks on the cold streets with people from Ukraine, desperately trying to find some sense of orientation together, were followed by a year in which my work completely changed, and the entry of many new influences who would become good friends and colleagues. The first emergency "Cultural Workers Cafe" events initiated by Inga Zimprich, Viktoria Lyakh and Sönke Hallman at Flutgraben were created to support incoming cultural workers to meet each other and engage in mutual support. These were followed by the development of Cultural Workers Studio, a shared space which became both my home base at Flutgraben by Berlin's River Spree, and a kind of utopian cultural project you can only find in Berlin. Through supporting the studio as it's only member not from Ukraine, I co-moderated a film festival, supported a livestream concert, modeled on the catwalk, and learned how to cook various Ukrainian specialties, as well as convivially supporting my colleagues in finding some sense of stability in the new (often very bureaucratic) environment.

monstrous

Among the post-COVID phenomena in Performing Arts - which initiated an almost-complete devastation outside centralised institutions and stages (for example, performing artists losing, *gasp*, 90% of revenue Europe-wide) - there has been a noticeable surge in interesting independent production. This is partly a result of public funding (particularly the Neustart Kultur funding program) addressing the need to financially prop up a sector almost completely destroyed, and unable to practice due to social regulations. These productions do little to make up for the loss of convivial traditions, connections, and practices that occurred in 2020 and 2021. But they are interesting phenomena by themselves, and various performing artists have found ways to use the given circumstances to make visible things that would otherwise have stayed in the dusty lockers of drafts and sketches.

monstrous is an unfashionable offering from long-time theatre practitioner and environmental biotechnologist Daniela Marcozzi and dramaturg/novelist Francesca Sarah Toich, in that it pays unusual attention to theatre tradition, and bothers to involve itself in the creation of a deep and multi-layered dramatic text. The show begins with an abstract presentation of questions that will be answered later: a masked figure undertakes a carefully choreographed dance, followed by a white-masked, bird-like figure, and two pink-robed guardians. The images seem to swim and hover over the air, in a call-and-response formula that will be repeated, making propositions in the abstract that will be answered as the dystopian reality slowly unfolds.

Photo: Turlach O'Broin

Some questions are answered with the entry of (masked, of course) doctor and nurse figures, who begin to proclaim medical phenomena in direct address to the audience, although in an abrupt and absurd articulation. "I think you will be very delighted with the womb 4849, doctor!" exclaims the over-energised nurse, as the white-masked figure spreads its legs downstage in the Lithotomy position. "Where were you consummated?" asks the doctor. "Prenzlauer Berg", replies the patient. A story of giving birth to a rabbit ensues, before the patient is told that they are privileged to be giving birth to a very endangered species - the White Rhinoceros - and helpfully supplied with a description of its unique biological characteristics. This occurs among occasional pointed references to life "before the regime", and sarcastic gratitude to women for "making their wombs available for the re-population of endangered species".

Photo: Turlach O'Broin