This year’s master’s theses from the Stage Design and Scenic Space programme at TU Berlin impressively demonstrate the diversity and innovative spirit of the graduates. The projects on display range from stage and costume design concepts based on texts by Edouard Louis and Maria Milisavljević (Staubfrau) and Dea Loher (Unschuld) to installation-based, immersive and multimedia works on freely chosen themes. The spectrum of the works spans artistic practice, political statements and spatial research. The Master’s theses exemplify the students’ attitude and commitment; through their designs and installations, they open up new perspectives on the theatrical space and take responsibility for social issues.
Students: Reyhan Akdemir, Zoe Bertram, Eleni Drazinou, Franziska Goetschi, Mireia Guzmàn, Henrike Haber, Daria Hannig, Soffia Heese, Paulina Jarosinska, Leander Lentner, Julia Mock, Inés Peláez, Ilana Custos Quatreville, Chiara Poma Rinklef, Catharina Rodriguez, Julie Savery, Michael Schulte-Austum, Ekaterina Tiniakova
Lecturers / Mentors: Prof. Kerstin Laube, Klemens Kühn, Verena Hemmerlein, Annette Müller, Maria Wolgast, Steffi Wurster, Franziska Ritter, Nele Balkhausen, Johann Jörg, Nina Wetzel
A detailed look at the individual Master’s theses
“Marie,”
Set and costume design based on the texts
‘The Nutcracker and the Mouse King’ – E. T. A. Hoffmann and ‘The Dust Woman’ – Maria Milisavljević / Dramaturg: Artem Obushchak
Home no longer offers protection. Dust becomes an army of mice; a child’s fear becomes a story that repeats itself across generations. Behind Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker” lies the world of “The Dust Woman”: an everyday life in which violence persists and fantasy and reality become inseparable. It is the story of a child who hides the horror within the fairy tale – until even the fairy tale no longer offers a safe haven.
Ekaterina Tiniakova
Master’s supervision: Prof. Kerstin Laube, Verena Hemmerlein
„Trägst du keine Schuld, trag ich dich nicht weiter“
(If you’re not to blame, I won’t carry you any further)
Set and Costume Design for Dea Loher’s “Unschuld”
In “Unschuld”, Dea Loher portrays characters who, caught between systemic failure and individual guilt, seek meaning, redemption and a sense of connection. As isolated figures abandoned by society, they direct their frustration towards themselves and their surroundings. The set and costume design combines precarious living environments, harsh industrial architecture and fairground elements to create an exposed, rugged world populated by grotesque characters whose life stories intersect in a fateful manner.
Leander Lentner
Master’s supervision: Prof. Kerstin Laube, Maria Wolgast
“Und so fühlte ich mich wie im Paketzentrum“
And so I felt as if I were in a parcel sorting centre
A warm welcome! It’s great to have you here! As a new member of staff, you’ll soon realise that it’s not always immediately obvious where something comes from, where it belongs, or why it’s ended up here in the first place. Just follow the instructions on the parcels and avoid jumping to conclusions. We work to a piecework system here. Sometimes it all gets a bit overwhelming, but that’s just how it is. I know it’s all quite a lot to take in on your first day. For now, just focus on keeping everything moving. The rest will fall into place. Any questions?
Michael Schulte-Austum
Master’s supervisors: Steffi Wurster, Johann Jörg
In Search of Traces
Set and costume design for “Staubfrau” by Maria Milisavjević
A set and costume concept that approaches Maria Milisavjević’s “Staubfrau” from an archival perspective. Women retell the stories that need to be told, thereby uncovering the traces left by patriarchal violence and societal expectations in bodies, generations and life stories. The production sees itself as an act of bearing witness: memories are reconstructed collectively. Between controlled nature and wild growth, between repression and remembrance, a space emerges that connects individual experiences with their structural causes.
Franziska Goetschi
Master’s supervision: Maria Wolgast, Verena Hemmerlein
From the Archive to the Stage
Set and costume design for A Woman’s Freedom by Édouard Louis
“It all began with a photograph. […] I can hardly find the words to describe it, but everything about her posture, her gaze and the movement of her hair conveys, in this photograph, a sense of freedom, of infinite possibilities lying ahead, and perhaps also of happiness.” — Édouard Louis, A Woman’s Freedom (2021)
As I read the opening lines of Édouard Louis’s novel, I was reminded of photographs of my mother. They became the starting point for this work in set and costume design, which has emerged from archives, memories and stories passed down through the generations.
Ilana Custos Quatreville
Master’s supervisors: Klemens Kühn, Nina Wetzel
SPLITTER & GANZ
A dance production by the children’s and youth dance company of Sasha Waltz & Guests.
Who am I? What is identity? And how does it come about? Choreography, music, costume, set design and 31 young people have come together to ask these questions. In doing so, it became clear that if we do not focus too narrowly on individuality but instead zoom out further, the relationships and connections within which identity emerges become visible. And suddenly, you can hear a starry sky of hoodies whispering: aren’t we all, and everything, connected? And doesn’t everything then potentially play a part in who you are right now?
Soffia Heese
Master’s supervision: Verena Hemmerlein, Prof. Kerstin Laube
Photos: Eva Radünzel
A band takes to the stage at the opera house
Concert design for the 10th-anniversary concert of the band Rikas at the Stuttgart State Opera
A band that once set out on the roads of Europe with guitars and an Interrail ticket takes to the stage at the Stuttgart State Opera. Ten years of the band’s history – told through a concert experience. The evening is divided into two halves: The first is a daydream, featuring a shadow screen and a narrative voice. The second is a show: a show staircase, glitter, retro glamour. In between, an interval. And the question of how much narration a live performance can sustain, and how much of a pop concert an opera stage can accommodate.
Chiara Poma Rinklef
Master’s supervision: Franziska Ritter, Annette Müller
Sensitive Machines
This Master’s project examines functionality and productivity as defining concepts of modernity. Power tools embody this functionality: we use them to drill into the fetishisation of productivity. To this end, tools and found materials are removed from their usual functional contexts and reassembled. Through hybrid objects and costumes, a speculative cyborg world emerges in which the relationship between body and machine is destabilised.
Julie Savery
Master’s supervision: Prof. Kerstin Laube, Annette Müller
The Figure as Object
This Master’s project translates the fragmentary characters from Dea Loher’s Unschuld into objects that make their symbolic states visible. The installation depicts people on the margins of society not as psychological figures, but as material condensations of failure, longing and social indifference. An additional layer of voices enables visitors to understand the objects for themselves: fragments of text and linguistic snippets open up individual points of access and allow the figures to be experienced through sound, space and association.
Julia Mock
Master’s supervision: Prof. Kerstin Laube, Steffi Wurster
Anleitung ein anderer zu werden
A Guide to Becoming Someone Else
A fashion show performance on Alexanderplatz
Édouard Louis’s writings explore questions of origin, identity and class power: themes that affect us all. Yet although his works have long since found their way onto stages and into bookshops, they often remain confined to these cultural spaces. Yet they possess a social urgency that must be experienced beyond these spaces. This Master’s thesis seeks an answer to this dilemma: it transfers Louis’s themes into the public urban space and makes them accessible there as a collective spectacle.
Daria Hannig
Master’s supervisors: Klemens Kühn, Franziska Ritter
Fische können unter Wasser atmen
Fish can breathe underwater
In a wet room, trapped in a web of expectations, external and self-control. Freely inspired by motifs from Staubfrau by Maria Milisavljević, the installation shows how these expectations, translated into the use of cleaning implements, make action more difficult. This gives rise to a longing to break free from this patriarchal web, to defy gravity and to be able to breathe freely where others would suffocate. The longing simply to let go and swim against the tide.
Paulina Jarosinska
Master’s supervision: Maria Wolgast, Prof. Kerstin Laube
Häutungen / Moultings
Spatial and costume installation based on Édouard Louis’s How to Become Someone Else
The installation translates Édouard Louis’s narrative of social transformation into a walk-in space of skin. Latex skins removed from a wardrobe form a spatial extension of the body, situated between memory and origin. In combination with preserved fragments of clothing, a structure emerges comprising traces, breaks and overlaps. Transformation is presented not as a new beginning, but as a process of shedding: earlier versions of the self remain inscribed within the new form.
Reyhan Akdemir
Master’s supervisors: Klemens Kühn, Nehle Balkhausen
Landscape of diverse knowledge
This installation is one of the outcomes of the Intergenerational Climate Resilience Lab. It is based on a World Café that brought together older adults and students with a migrant background to discuss climate change, loneliness and social resilience. The ideas and contributions on display highlight a wide range of perspectives and underscore the importance of participatory research. The installation explores where these ideas might lead: some encourage self-reflection, some reach policy-makers, whilst others fade away or continue to circulate through society and time.
Inés Peláez
Master’s supervisors: Annette Müller, Franziska Ritter
Navel Garden
The navel is the body’s first scar, the trace of a connection that was severed before we knew we had a body that belonged to someone else. In the Navel Garden, negative impressions of real navels form a landscape of mountains. Each shape bears the story of a woman: what she learnt without anyone teaching her, gestures, norms, shame. Like a botanical catalogue, this installation documents what seems so self-evident that it is barely recognisable as a metaphor. The monstrous is not the exception. It is the rule when it functions perfectly.
Catharina Rodriguez
Master’s supervision: Maria Wolgast, Prof. Kerstin Laube
WHAT REMAINS
Set and costume design for Staubfrau by Maria Milisavljević
Shaped by patriarchal structures of violence, this work explores what is remembered, passed on and inscribed in the body. Past and present merge; inner spaces of thought are abruptly disrupted by everyday life, whilst the voices of different generations enter into dialogue, contradict one another and allow different truths to coexist. Through physical research, the text’s powerful imagery and metaphors are translated into voice, movement and presence. This creates an open experimental framework for a possible stage adaptation, situated between individual experience and collective power.
Zoe Bertram
Master’s supervision: Prof. Kerstin Laube, Maria Wolgast
“Mona Lisa Overdrive”
a collection of digital users
In a reality where everything and everyone is under digital surveillance, 3Jane – a digital being – becomes a collector. This installation is the place where she keeps her collection of digital users. These are transformed from living beings into stone, and from stone into a single mask. The installation draws on several characters from William Gibson’s book “Mona Lisa Overdrive” to explore the relationships between the materiality of the body and the immateriality of data in the context of digital capitalism.
Lena Drazinou
Master’s supervisors: Klemens Kühn, Maria Wolgast
21:54
“Take heart. I’m leaving. I’m going to leave you,” writes Maria Milisavljević in her play Staubfrau. The most dangerous place in a woman’s life is her own home; the decision to leave is the most dangerous moment in an abusive relationship. Like the play, the exhibition examines patriarchal structures that facilitate and enable femicide. In doing so, it seeks to highlight alternatives, encourage reflection on one’s own actions and perceptions, and inspire change.
Henrike Haber
Master’s supervision: Prof. Kerstin Laube, Annette Müller
A Woman’s Freedom
An abstract kitchen appears as a false, unusable space. In an atmosphere of stagnation, voices, images and fragile miniatures circle between memory, violence and the desire for liberation. The starting point is Édouard Louis’s novel A Woman’s Freedom. The installation allows visitors to experience how shame shapes the relationship between Édouard and his mother Monique to their own lives, their origins and their very selves. In doing so, shame is revealed as a socially embedded phenomenon.
Mireia Guzmán
Master’s supervision: Klemens Kühn, Steffi Wurster
Contributors to the audio tracks:
Olivia Stahn – voice of Monique
Emil Lug – voice of Édouard
Birte Gerstenkorn – sound recording and mixing
Uta Hörmeyer – dramaturgy
Mireia Guzmán – direction
Photo credits: Mireia Guzmáneint als falscher, unbenutzbarer Raum. In einer Atmosphäre des Stillstands kreisen Stimmen, Bilder und fragile Miniaturen zwischen Erinnerung, Gewalt und dem Wunsch nach Befreiung. Ausgangspunkt ist Édouard Louis’ Roman Die Freiheit einer Frau. Die Installation macht erfahrbar, wie Scham das Verhältnis von Édouard und seiner Mutter Monique zum eigenen Leben, zur Herkunft und zum eigenen Selbst prägt. Dabei wird Scham als sozial verankertes Phänomen sichtbar.
Mireia Guzmán
Masterbetreuung: Klemens Kühn, Steffi Wurster
Mitwirkende an den Audiospuren:
Olivia Stahn – Stimme Monique
Emil Lug – Stimme Édouard
Birte Gerstenkorn – Tonaufnahmen und Mischung
Uta Hörmeyer – Dramaturgie
Mireia Guzmán – Regie
Fotocredits: Mireia Guzmán