This is not a Performance about Your Beauty

A Guide Through the City and the Forest

A performative Reading

by Ivana Sajko

A women’s choir moves along Potsdamer Straße – over a long path from the erased space of Potsdamer Platz toward Kleistpark – collecting bricks and assembling them back into the buildings. The city through which they move is seen as an archive of violence.

The theatre text was written in 2023 for the project While History Writes Itself at Maxim Gorki Theatre. Parts were performed as a staged reading accompanied by a video installation by Anna Malena Große.

Ivana Sajko is a theatre author and writer, working in the overlapping fields of literature and performance. She is an author of five highly-praised novels and dozens of political theatre pieces which were staged throughout the world, from Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne to Dramaten in Stockholm. Her novel Liebesroman won HKW Internationaler Literaturpreis in Berlin and was shortlisted for Dublin Literary Award. In German language she published novels: such as Rio bar (Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2008), Liebesroman (Voland & Quist, 2017), Familienroman, Ereignisse von 1941 bis 1991 und darüber hinaus (Voland & Quist, 2020), Jeder Aufbruch ist ein kleiner Tod (Voland & Quist, 2022), as well as anthologies of theatre plays such as Archetyp: Medea. Bombenfrau. Europa: Trilogie (Verlag der Autoren, 2008) und Trilogie des Ungehorsams (Verlag der Autoren, 2012), together with the theatre essay Auf dem Weg zum Wahnsinn (und zur Revolution), eine Lektüre (Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2015).

Next date:

• Date Friday, 21/August/2026 20:00
• Venue Aula im Milchhof
• Address Schwedter Straße 232, 10435 Berlin-Kreisfreie Stadt Berlin