PART ONE

Heimat is a place of safety and belonging, but also a time of limited solidarity and folk fabulation. It is national ideology camouflaged as Heimatliebe; there to exclude and divide but also to unite and conquer. These tensions change meaning depending on which side of the border one finds themselves. In Queerdos Heimat, we stop being the object of your polemics and radicalization.

Queerdos Heimat was the first instalment of a performative trilogy that follows the everyday lives of four Berlin-based queers as they navigate their "integration" into German society. The HEIMAT projects want to be a collaboration with the artists spanning over several years:

PART ONE

A Ukrainian writer flees the war-ravaged Donetsk region and enters Germany in search of safety and acceptance via a harrowing series of interrogations. A young Syrian sings a love song to his mother, reminiscing about her kitchen and the life he had to leave behind. An Israeli actor retraces his footsteps back to Tel Aviv in 1986, retreading every painful childhood memory and homophobic slur. A surreal voice provides the beating pulse of the performance, bouncing from each of the performer’s deep and complex family histories to harrowing news headlines and snippets of documentary journalism.

Queer narratives of displacement are construed as performative statements in six short scenes and a tender epilogue. Combining spoken word and dance-theatre, the performance exists on two levels: the world of the performer’s personal story, tragic but tinged with moments of tenderness, and the surreal world of alienation and absurdity in which fears come alive. Rudimentary, dirty and improvisational, poor and lo-fi; HEIMAT forms a roar of resistance and celebrates those exiled bodies that have given up trying to build homes on quicksand, instead finding home in holding each other.

This is a fight against marginalization and exclusion, a reaching for the world which lies beyond the narrow restrictions of German bureaucracy. What does it mean, to belong? What does it mean, this Heimat?  - The word itself has a long and violent history. Heimat is supposed to be a place of safety and belonging, but the rise of neo-liberal regimes and nationalism make sure that this authoritarian idea is incapable of including everyone. It is national ideology camouflaged as Heimatliebe; there to exclude and divide but also to unite and conquer. It is a luxury to some, but not to those queer and exiled who find themselves on the wrong side of the border. Queer bodies are exoticized, eroticized and terrorized, but still, they keep going, pushing through land borders, gender spectrums and sexual orientations.

In the QUEERDOS HEIMAT series, we strive to find a discourse between these very borders. A journey toward a safe place of (be)longing. A rejection of heteronormativity, homo- and transphobia, racism and rightwing radicalization, patriotism and cultural superiority. This is a celebration of queer desire, fragility and unpredictability.

A Queerdos Kollektiv 2022 Production

English with Ukrainian, Romanian, Hebrew and Arab excerpts

With

Ariel Nil Levy

Cat Jugravu

Jessica Voss

Zain Saleh

Direction, concept, script

Queerdos Kollektiv

Script supervision

Jenny Browne

Music composition

Andrei Raicu

Set design

Luqua Bertin

Set design assistance

Vinzenz Hangler

Costume Design

Official Rebrand

Light design

Mihal Andrysiak

Photography

Roni Lugassi

Production

Simona Klaniute

Queerdos HEIMAT is a Queerdos Kollektiv production and a Maxim Gorki Theater co-production. It was presented in 2022 during the Queer Week Festival EXILE at Maxim Gorki Theatre. Many thanks to TheaterHaus Mitte for their kind support