MEXA: Reality Show

• 
• 

The artists’ collective MEXA emerged within a public shelter for unhoused people in São Paulo. There, residents lived under constant surveillance in a shared space where newcomers arrived regularly and others were quickly removed for breaking the rules. Over a decade of working together, MEXA has transformed significantly. Yet, the turbulence of its origins continues to shape the group.

In Reality Show, ten performers inhabit a mutable environment that evokes both a home and a television set. Furniture and cameras gradually appear and disappear, while live projections are edited in real time. The familiar grammar of reality TV echoes both their past experience of collective living and their present life in theater, conjuring a visibility without power, glamour intertwined with exhaustion, and intimacy turned into transaction.

The group decided  to turn the performance into an actual reality show—in which the winner will be determined through an elimination game and take the prize home at the end of the season. Like this, MEXA reflects on its own trajectory: on working with autobiography and documentary theater and on inventing lives on stage that would not be possible beyond it.

The work exhibits the narratives expected from a group forged in instability, where stories of hardship and scarcity often emerge as the ones most likely to “win the show.” Reality Show powerfully illustrates how we all sometimes perform versions of ourselves to be accepted—and the costs of this constant work on our self. Fiction becomes a strategy for belonging and survival on labor and housing markets that demand constant visibility and self-revelation.

INFORMATION ON ACCESSIBILITY

Creation: MEXADirection, dramaturgy: João TurchiPerformers, co-creators: Aivan, Ale Tradução, Dourado, Laysa Elias, Lucas Heymanns, Ph Verissima, Podeserdesligado, Suzy Muniz, Tatiane Arcanjo, Veronika VerãoProduction coordination: Francesca Tedeschi/Casa do PovoResearch, direction assistance: Lucas HeymannsVideo performer,  video creation, technical direction: Laysa EliasSound design, original music: PodeserdesligadoScenography: VãoProduction design: Lu MugayarCostume design: Anuro Anuro e Cacau FranciscoGraphic design, visual identity: MargemChoreography: Alexandre PaulikevitchDramaturgical collaboration: Julia PedreiraOriginal song: DouradoLighting design, video installation: Bio Riff, Juliana BucaretchiVideo operator: Fagner LourençoLighting operator: ClaudiAcknowledgements: Guilherme Giufrida, Casa do Povo team, Esponja

A production by MEXA in co-production with Sophiensæle, Festival d'Automne à Paris, Kunstenfestivaldesarts and Casa do Povo. The guest performance is made possible by the Goethe Institut. Never Work – International Performance Festival is a festival by Sophiensæle, supported by the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF). Sophiensæle is supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. Media partners: Berlin Art Link, Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.

Next date: Reality Show - DE Premiere

• Date Friday, 12/June/2026 19:00 (1 more date)
• Venue Sophiensaele - Festsaal
• Address Sophienstraße 18, 10178 Berlin-Mitte
• Price from €25.00

Book tickets for this date

Order online