In 2024, 14 individual works from various topics in the area of ​​space, transformation and translation were submitted to us as master’s theses.

The variety of the chosen thesis topics and forms of implementation, which range from stage space/costume, exhibition formats, theatrical spatial installations and film works, represent the interdisciplinary orientation of our Stage Design_Scenic Space degree program. As part of a student-organized exhibition “Tour”, the variety of works was visible to the public on June 22, 2024.

In the works of Alicia Willudda and Gaetan Langlois-Meurinne, space and change are initially understood in material and practical terms. The works of Paula Koch and Hannah Grimme, dealing with Kafka’s novel ‘America’, also ask how inner spaces and loneliness can become physical. Turning again to the collective, Ellen Schäfer examines intergenerational spaces: What does a space of silence look like?

Generation, kinship and fatherhood brings Saijun Xie to Kafka’s ‘process’ and the origin of our worlds. In her work ‘Embodied Traumas’, Lina Staudinger asks herself how a body can be understood as a home and a self-transforming in-between. With a work on ‘The Metamorphosis’, probably Kafka’s most famous work, Natalie Giannopoulos also explores questions of identity and transformation.

Change is closely connected to identity, as can be seen in the works of Arina Nicolae-Balas, Laura Batkowski, Nils Braun and Zoë Stach. While Laura researches on a work-real level how quickly and credibly changes in identity can be implemented, Zoë tells the connection between identity and object in a contemporary fairy tale. Based on this, what is probably the most archetypal work on identity and change, ‘Orlando’ by Virginia Woolf Nils and Arina, serves to deal with the representation and transformation of gender identity. Arina is also interested in the narrative element of metafiction in Woolf’s work.

Narration and translation will be the formal subject of the discussion in two works: Joshua Tewes-McCoy discusses media translations using Anne Carson’s ‘Autobiography of Red’ while Areen Abu Raddad uses the place “Madafa” as a basis for the question of what requirements a space fulfills must in order to make cultural translations possible.