Vienna-based queer theatre ensemble Nesterval will make their Berlin debut at Sophiensæle this autumn with Nestervals Eldorado. They’re known for site-specific, immersive performances that dramatise historical events with meticulous accuracy. This time, the group transports us back to 1930s Berlin to explore the lived experiences of gay, lesbian, trans and queer people during the Nazi era. But this isn’t another Cabaret-inspired stage show. In the words of the show’s artistic director, it doesn’t serve up the “glamorous, joyful West Berlin” we know so well. Instead, Nesterval turns its attention to the queer communities of the Scheunenviertel, weaving their stories into the history of Sophiensæle itself.
Much of what survives comes from Nazi records rather than queer voices themselves.
As part of its 30-year anniversary programme, Sophiensæle invited several artists and ensembles to dig into the building’s history, from its multifaceted past as a theatre and meeting point for collective action to its role as a community centre in the heart of Mitte. Nestervals Eldorado is a mammoth undertaking, and not just because of its sensitive subject matter. The production packs in 200 scenes, 20 performers and will have separate English and German showings. Running for three hours and 15 minutes, the audience gets to decide which characters to follow, who to interact with and how deeply to dive into the piece. In other words, you’re not just watching the story unfold; you’re shaping your own version of it.
Established in 2011, Nesterval has created almost 30 national and international site-specific performances. Bringing together researchers, writers, dramaturges and performers, the ensemble is itself a queer family, giving a voice to people whose stories have been written out of history. Ahead of their final rehearsals, we caught up with Nesterval artistic director Martin Finnland and researcher and performer Gisa Fellerer.
Where do you begin a project of this scale?
History doesn’t just belong to the past; it speaks to the present as well.
Fellerer: We always work as a team. For the Berlin production, we were joined by Berlin-based researcher Lotta Beckers, who spent time in the Landesarchiv Berlin and uncovered original material that became especially important for Eldorado. At the beginning, we were looking for stories – real lives, rather than fiction. Another valuable source was from our collaborator Jürgen Pettinger, who researched and wrote FRANZ – Schwul unterm Hakenkreuz (Franz – Gay Under the Swastika). From there, we gathered biographies and identified recurring motifs. Every motif in the play comes from documented research and can be traced back to a real person or event. We then combined those motifs to create theatrical characters. The stories aren’t direct portraits of individuals, but composites built from real experiences. At the same time, we were thinking practically about the ensemble and which performers would play which roles. Once the research was in place, we mapped out the structure of the piece, when the characters meet, what they talk about and where the conflicts arise. We have around 20 characters, each with their own story, and we developed that structure from both perspectives: those who were persecuted and those carrying out the persecution.
Finnland: What I found especially interesting was comparing Berlin with a similar project we had previously made in Vienna called Die Namenlosen in 2023. It was fascinating to see what was different, what was similar and to develop an entirely new perspective. Quite early on, we decided we didn’t want to make a show about the glamorous, joyful West Berlin of the 1920s and 30s. Instead, we wanted to focus on Berlin-Mitte and ask what life was really like there. It was a district of working-class and low-income communities, which made it very different from Die Namenlosen in Austria. I loved discovering what everyday life in Berlin actually looked like, beyond the glittering image people often take away from films like Cabaret.
When you’re doing that research, are there certain people or stories that immediately stand out to you?
Fellerer: I’d say yes and no. Of course, you come across people whose stories immediately stand out and you think, ‘Wow, that’s an incredible backstory.’ But then you find another one and another, and those stories often merge into a single theatrical character. What’s really important for us is that there isn’t one main character. Every character is a main character in their own right, and that’s always been central to how we work.
Finnland: One of the biggest challenges was that queer history has so often gone untold. Unlike many Jewish families, where stories were passed down through generations, many queer people remained hidden, even after the war. If you had a gay uncle, it was often considered easier to tell people he’d been sent to a concentration camp because he was a communist than to admit he’d been imprisoned for being gay. Then, just as people began speaking more openly in the 1970s and 80s, the AIDS crisis claimed another generation, and with it, countless personal histories. That means much of what survives comes from Nazi records rather than queer voices themselves. We don’t have many diaries or first-person accounts, so piecing these stories together required careful research. The characters are composites built from documented experiences. We didn’t invent their emotions or circumstances; we brought together real fragments of many lives to create something that could have been true.
How did you settle on the title Eldorado, given the club’s legacy in Berlin?
Finnland: We’re really just using Eldorado as a frame to give people, especially Berliners who don’t know our work, a sense of what the evening is about. The funny thing is, it’s not actually about Eldorado. It’s about all the other queer people who may never have set foot there, but who were living and working in Berlin. For the audience, Eldorado is an entry point into the world we’re creating.
Fellerer: Eldorado had already closed by 1932, and our Berlin story begins in 1934, so the play isn’t actually set there. Instead, we drew on a much broader range of Berlin history. We also researched, with the help of Lotta Beckers, the history of Sophiensæle itself, as well as the Scheunenviertel, using archival material to weave those places into the world of the production. For us, it’s always about world-building. Nesterval functions almost like a family, so we wanted to root them in the history of the neighbourhood. Of course, we also took artistic licence, shifting certain details so they would work within the story we wanted to tell.
For someone coming to your work for the first time, how would you describe the performance (without giving any spoilers)?
Finnland: The performance unfolds as an immersive journey through the building, with characters interacting directly with the audience and, at times, responding to their questions and reactions. Rather than watching a fixed narrative, audiences decide whose story they want to follow and are free to switch between characters, creating a different experience every time. Of course, the longer you join one, the deeper you go. Whether they spend the evening with a queer protagonist, a persecutor or dip in and out of multiple storylines, each choice reveals a different perspective. Audiences have quite a lot of FOMO. You need to live with that. Out of the 200 scenes, you’ll only get to see 20 of them during one evening. For me, the most interesting part comes afterwards. If you’ve come with friends, you can meet up in the canteen for a drink and talk about what you’ve seen. As everyone shares their different experiences, all those separate stories begin to form a much bigger picture. That’s the magic of immersive theatre.
Fellerer: I think people need that time afterwards because it’s a difficult evening to experience. You often see audience members in tears. If you’ve spent two hours following a character and then, suddenly, they’re arrested by the Nazis and disappear from the story, you feel that loss yourself. That’s something we deliberately wanted to create. The play is about everything queer culture lost during that period, about what was taken away after the extraordinary freedom of the 1920s, especially in Berlin.
Ultimately, what do you hope audiences leave with after spending an evening in that world?
Finnland: I think it’s really about emotion. We want to give audiences a sense of what it felt like to be a queer person at that time. We’re reaching a point where the people who lived through those years, the Zeitzeugen, the first-hand witnesses, are sadly passing away. When I was at school in Austria, we still had survivors come in and tell us their stories, sharing what they saw and how they experienced that period. Those opportunities are becoming increasingly rare, so from the very beginning, we asked ourselves, ‘How do we pass those emotions on?’ We wanted to show that life wasn’t simply black and white. Not every day during the Nazi era was defined entirely by fear and suffering. There was love, there was laughter, there were moments of joy. People were still living their lives. It was important to give a new generation a sense of that complexity, and to show that history is much richer than the black-and-white photographs we often associate with it.
Fellerer: For many of these people, all that’s left are names on death lists from the concentration camps. What we’re trying to do is give those names faces, stories and lives again. As Martin said, their lives weren’t defined by tragedy every single day. They loved, they laughed, they built relationships and then suddenly, they disappeared. We want audiences to feel that absence, not just understand it intellectually. It’s important to remember that humanity, especially at a time when we’re seeing a backlash against queer lives and a broader shift towards more conservative politics. History doesn’t just belong to the past; it speaks to the present as well.
Watch Nestervals Eldorado at Sophiensæle from Sep 24-27 (German), Oct 1-4 (English) and Oct 8-11 (German), details
