
A confession: last January, I had no idea what was in store for me on Berlin’s stages in 2024. I did not expect to see cannibalism grace the Volksbühne, as Florentina Holzinger’s Satanic-nun-opera-cum-utopian-mass Sancta transformed Xana Novais into Christ, wounded her flesh, cooked it on a griddle and then served it to fellow actor Sophie Duncan. Raised as I was in the puritanical United States, I did not think that I would ever see a real penis enter a real mouth onstage, as occurred during a scene of resuscitation in Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber’s Method, which turned a critique of method acting into a sci-fi thriller.
I did not think that I would ever see a real penis enter a real mouth onstage.
But it wasn’t simply shock or provocation that awaited me last year at the theatre. I had no idea about the vitality that Ohad Naharin could convey with the opening dance of his Minus 16 at the Deutsche Oper. As the Staatsballett Berlin’s dancers thrust their chests up and their arms behind them, their backs arching on their chairs, their chests were illuminated by the stage lighting. It was as if one were in the presence of a mystical experience – as if these dancers had each been touched by a god. I had found Sharon Eyal’s opening Saaba to be haunting and powerful – and it was a more compelling, more complete work of dance overall – but Naharin’s repeated gestures undid me.
I was likewise wholly unprepared for the power of Yana Ross’s Sterben Lieben Kämpfen at the Berliner Ensemble – perhaps my favourite piece of the year, whose run was cruelly cut short by the 15,000 litres of water that (also unexpectedly) poured out of the theatre’s sprinkler system and completely upended the season’s progression. (The Berliner Ensemble still set attendance records.) Ross managed to translate Karl Ove Knausgård’s iconic My Struggle into a visual grammar that bordered on the absurd: the author’s alcoholic grandmother was a speechless crow; his children were potted plants; his book’s pages ended up all over the stage.

She even introduced new voices into the work, enlisting Cynthia Micas to lead audiences as “master of ceremony” beyond the source material and into a history of performance, where the text’s own digressions on Hitler became a surprise rendition of ‘Springtime for Hitler’ from the Mel Brooks musical, The Producers. No one could have expected Ross to transform Knausgård’s text into such first-rate feminist theatre.
Even had you warned me, I couldn’t have been ready for the pathos of Unser Deutschlandmärchen or the power of the song that broke out from the piece’s excruciating emotional intensity. Taner Şahintürk and Sesede Terziyan so fully inhabited their roles that they brought me to tears. Nor was I prepared for the most successful piece at Studio R, the first of its ‘Fremde Poesie’ series entitled Yahya Hassan, which was both casual and poetic, playful and profound.
I didn’t expect to see Ann Göbel ride an electric rodeo bull – or witness Martin Wuttke in an absolutely deranged wig – in Enis Maci and Mazlum Nergiz’s complex Karl May at the Volksbühne. On their main stage, the moment of sword swallowing – or the Texas two step – that broke out in the character-driven Sistas! seemed to come out of nowhere.
Who knows what can happen in them once you take your seat – I certainly don’t.
I didn’t know how much I would want the fascist to cease speaking at the end of Catarina e a beleza de matar fascistas, which played to great acclaim at the Schaubühne’s FIND Festival. And I had no idea how impressed I would be by the pulsating physicality of the Berliner Ensemble’s Gabriel Schneider in Spielerfrauen and then in The Threepenny Opera.
I also must admit – and perhaps I overly idealised this city’s investment in its arts and culture – I also didn’t expect Berlin to cut €130 million from the culture budget. I did not expect to see Constanze Becker or Katharina Thalbach or Lars Eidinger doing impassioned monologues in the middle of Pariser Platz. (I must sadly report, the magic of their performance didn’t travel well.)
I didn’t expect to see the people of culture doing half-hearted calisthenics led by the Staatsballett’s Kathlyn Pope. And I did not expect those people to be so respectful to Joe Chialo, a former Musikmanager whose lack of care for the diversity of culture is clear in his insistence on measures that divide and defund the cultural world rather than bolster it.
Kai Wegner, Joe Chialo and Franziska Giffey can cut €130 million from the culture budget. That will reduce the number of shows – and perhaps, though we hope not, the number of theatres. But whatever they do, they won’t be able to cut the spontaneity from live performance. Even as I know that the present is grim, I look forward to the surprises that await us on the stages of this city. Theatres and theatre need our support more than ever. And who knows what can happen in them once you take your seat – I certainly don’t.