Roses Rising is a two part performance presented in the spring of 2026 at Gropius Bau and HAU1 Hebbel am Ufer Berlin.

Roses Rising - The Movement was presented at Gropius Bau Berlin in March 2026 curated by Nora-Swantje Almes.

Roses Rising - The Dinner was presented at HAU1 Hebbel am Ufer Berlin in April 2026 with support from Haupstadtkulturfonds.

Roses Rising - The Dinner:  No time and place in particular.  4 guests. 4 manifestations of the happenings inside and outside. The stage opens onto a minimalist and high-contrast dining room - elegantly and at the same time eerily framed by distorted window openings and door frames. In this set design, the play is divided into four short acts, in which the dinner party is told four times, each from the perspective of one of the four guests. Each character in Roses Rising wrestles with different existential questions in which inner and outer struggles intermingle. Delusions, self-doubt, political exasperation, narcissistic agitation, a hopeful urge to act - each character finds their way differently in the field of tension between a self-satisfied existence, the bourgeois impulse of self-criticism and the sometimes helpless, sometimes action-orientated desire for political resistance against the authoritarian order.

The performance plays with constant shifts in perception. There are striking differences in how the people present perceive themselves, the others and the events of the evening. Based on their different class privileges, the characters create their own subjective realities in order to survive in an unstable world. The fragmented narrative, rich in perspective, invites the audience to speculate about what is not said and the external and internal existential threats present in their absence. As secrets are revealed, alliances shift and the threshold between reality and fantasy blurs. The events culminate in the evening's guests deciding, completely satiated and intoxicated, to make common cause and launch a counter-cultural movement.

When the bourgeoise faith in progress and reason is unsettled, how does the longing for revolt take shape? And how tightly entwined are self-interest and radical dissent? Moving between concert and ballet, the performance invites the audience to witness a dinner party unravel into a happening. With meticulously handcrafted costumes and stage designs, Roses Rising -The Movement unfolds in a distinctive style, traversing theatrical comedy, musical tableau vivant and performance. Developed through extensive research and collected materials on 1970s protest cultures, the work emerges as a performative collage that explores the conscious and unconscious strategies through which people respond to a world in crisis.