Sunville

«The sea is a wild animal…»
Survivors of the sea, refugees, exiles come together on an island. They create a new society from scratch without the old rules of origin or power. Is it possible to have a community built on love? The hosts for this evening are two intergalactic collaborators: Sun Ra, pioneer of Afrofuturism in response to omnipresent racism, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, who sought to flee the constriction of the art world. Both are fascinated by interplanetary vibrations, read the same spiritual book about love in the 1970s and set the cosmos free.

«The truth about the planet Earth is a bad truth,» sings Sun RA in 1972. He selects music and, with a dose of irony, space as a place of refuge. Afrofuturism is about «resistance through imagination» (Adyam Tesfamariam). This performance follows this trail and seeks out new answers. Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila takes us into the «Second World,» a place where African cosmologies, Black science-fiction and biting satire collide. Sometimes the only solution is to break out into laughter before we can continue dreaming.

Sofia Jernberg’s music is a place of resonance and contradiction: Contemporary composition meets spiritual jazz, improvisation is juxtaposed with griot tradition. Both – Jernberg and Mujila – are on the stage as singer and storyteller. Stephanie Thiersch’s choreography turns the space into a fluid body where language, sound and movement vibrate in permanent tension.

What is true and what is fiction? What is past and what is future? Sunville dives into an uncertain underwater world of the imagination, asking the seemingly simple question: How do we want to live?

Artists/Collaborators: Sofia Jernberg (Komposition, Musikalische Leitung), Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Libretto), Stephanie Thiersch (Regie, Choreografie, Bühnenkonzept), Sonja Füsti (Bühnenbild), Lauren Steel (Kostüme), Elisa Erkelenz (Kuration, Konzept, Dramaturgie), Flavia Wolfgramm (Dramaturgie), Roland Glasser (Englische Übersetzungen), Lena Müller (Deutsche Übersetzungen), Sofia Jernberg (Sopran), Noa Frenkel (Alt), Serge Kakudji (Countertenor), Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Storytelling, Performance), N. N. (Performance), Ole Morten Vågan (Kontrabass, musikalische Einstudierung), Espen Reinertsen (Saxofon), Kit Downes (Piano), Musiker*innen des Orchesters der Deutschen Oper Berlin (Streichquartett)

In deutscher, englischer, französischer Sprache sowie Suaheli

In Koproduktion mit Wiener Festwochen und VOICES BERLIN FESTIVAL. Mit großzügiger Unterstützung der Deutsche Bank Stiftung und des Förderkreises der Deutschen Oper Berlin

Next date:

• Date Friday, 25/September/2026 20:00 (5 more dates)
• Venue Tischlerei der Deutschen Oper Berlin
• Address Bismarckstraße 35, 10585 Berlin-Charlottenburg