VOX HUMANA

“War is outside, or inside, or over.” – Signa Köstler

What can be done with the human voice? One can sing, speak, pray, heal, protest, perform a performance, an opera, or a pop hit. In the summer of 2026, Opera Aperta, a group of Ukrainian artists living under the daily threat of Russia’s war of annihilation, gathers in Berlin-Neukölln to open the new season of the Neuköllner Oper. As a gesture of gratitude to Germany for its political support and its air-defense systems, the Ukrainians decide to offer this country the best thing they have – their voices – and promise to prepare Germany for victory at the Eurovision Song Contest 2027 by developing a radical political hyperpop project.

On the journey from Kyiv to Berlin, the artists enter a surreal soundscape in which the voice of Theodor Adorno, Ukrainian folk songs, and music of the interwar period blend together. The bus trip becomes a journey through time, at the end of which the travelling company finds itself in a Yiddish cabaret in Berlin in 1933 and witnesses the final meeting between the painter Charlotte Salomon and the singing teacher and psychotherapist Alfred Wolfsohn, who returned from the First World War with an acoustic trauma caused by the screams of war and cured himself through vocal exercises.

How do you imagine war? Does war sometimes visit you in your dreams? What does war sound like? Perhaps like a scream, like silence, like hoarseness, like a choir of acoustic hallucinations? VOX HUMANA. A SINGSPIEL searches for answers, searches for answers in the form of a “rhizomatic theatre” that constantly shifts between a workshop for extended vocal techniques, a techno ritual, a lecture on performance theory, and post-documentary theatre.

WITH Dariia Bohdan, Oleksandr Chyshii, Kateryna Hordiienko, Karolina Muzychenko, Sofiia Pavlichenko, Yuliia Vitraniuk, Marichka Styrbulova, Roman Grygoriv, Valeriia Vynogradova, Illia Razumeiko

TEXT, THEORY AND SPACE Illia Razumeiko COMPOSITION AND MUSICAL DIRECTION Roman Grygoriv DRAMATURGY Marichka Styrbulova, Dennis Depta ELECTRONIC MUSIC Valeriia Vynogradova COSTUME Kateryna Markush VIDEO Ivanna Yakovyna ASSISTANT DIRECTOR / PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT Cara Freitag PRODUKTION IN DER UKRAINE proto produkciia (Olia Diatel, Yulia Parysh)