• 1
• 2

• Performance + Audience discussion
• multi-chapter constellation artwork
• queer Utopia

• Mi., 16.10.2024, 20:00

Audience Talk following 'Palace of Ash and Rain'

In Palace of Ash and Rain, the Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS attempt to imagine a Queer Utopia. 'Palace of Ash and Rain' is the fifth chapter of a multi-chapter constellation artwork 'With Forests in Our Mouths'. The show will be followed by an audience talk.

• 1Foto © Óscar González. Materials burn in front of a metallic folie. A pink light is shed on the constellation.
• 2 Mmakgosi Kgabi, Dancer, choreographer

'Palace of Ash and Rain' aims to create a more accessible performance space for both audience and performers. Audience lighting levels will remain at a level where it is possible to move around and to leave the space if necessary. Alternative seating options will be available. The doors to the performance space will open at 19:30 and audiences are welcome to come and join us there to relax and get comfortable, listen to music, or ask questions until the performance begins at 20:00. The will be an Artist talk between the Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS (Chris Gylee & Aslan) and Mmakgosi Kgabi followed by the possibility to share impressions and ask all questions that came up during the performance.

About the venue

Ballhaus Ost

As an experimental stage for a wide range of forms of contemporary theater, it invites audiences to experience and discover new ways of artistic engagement with contemporary realities. Both aesthetic approaches and thematic scope are characterized by a socio-critical attitude and the search for alternatives to normative structures. Urbanity and locality, surprises and challenges, history and queerness, narration and documentation are represented in the program as well as a variety of exciting works for non-German speakers.   

https://www.ballhausost.de/?lang=en

About the piece

Palace of Ash and Rain

Don’t you know
They’re talking about a revolution? There! You can see it through the trees. A tower, a wall, a path through the leaves. A place out of time. Everyone is welcome at the Palace — but you have to leave everything behind: memories, your old life, even your name. For your new name, you can choose a colour: Rose, Turquoise, Fuchsia, Sage. There are rooms for sleeping, workshops, an infirmary and gardens. There’s karaoke sung in a brand new language. A lonely dance we dance once a year.

In this new live performance, Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS attempt to imagine a Queer Utopia: post capitalist, post trauma, post addiction, post sadness, post joy — an After to the mess that came Before. 

Don’t you know you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run …

»Palace of Ash and Rain« is the fifth chapter of »With Forests in Our Mouths«, a durational constellation artwork made up of multiple interconnected chapters shared across 2024 and 2025 and including performances, films, exhibitions and publications.

About the performance collective

ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS

The Queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS make multidisciplinary performance works, often using the Queer constructed language Damiá as an artistic tool. In 2023, they left Berlin for a new home at the edge of the forest in North Karelia, Finland.

https://oncewewereislands.com/