Theatre Festival * 20–30 August 2026 | Uferstudios Berlin
Artistically Powerful. Radically Inclusive. Politically Impactful.
15 years of KURINGA
The Aesthetics of Solidarity Festival is an artistic response to the rising popularity of right-wing parties and their political aesthetics of denialism, polarization, and culture of hate.
The Aesthetics of Solidarity is a Theatre Festival in which hot topics of society are translated into theatrical language. KURINGA’s theatre performances are aesthetic bridges that make complex topics—such as “housing justice”, “the ideologization of migration”, “legal rights of water” and “toxic masculinity”—accessible to the audience, stimulating a public dialogue.
The audience discovers how an experience can be simultaneously playful and profound. After each presentation, spectators take part in a discussion, seeking collective strategies in order to become part of the performance. In this theatrical interaction, the stage and the audience integrate into a single aesthetic space. The event becomes a communal Forum Theatre experience that transcends the theatre hall and persists as an active memory within each one. The Aesthetics of Solidarity Festival aims to demonstrate how democratic participation can be reimagined: artistically powerful, radically inclusive, and politically impactful.
The theatrical productions are performed as Legislative Theatre. The audience is hereby collaboratively developing political measures to address the problems represented on stage. It’s followed by a critical debate of these proposals with politicians and activists from the specific field and topic – that is accompanied by an online tool and mirrored through/by the festivals website. At the end a color-coded voting system (green, yellow, red) makes approval, doubt, and rejection visible. The audience members, social movements and parliamentary representatives work together to create a political Aesthetics of Solidarity, which cares for imagination, empathy, community-building, justice and democracy.
During the festival, the audience will be able to enjoy the theatrical productions presented by KURINGA Ensemble—under the artistic direction of Bárbara Santos and musical direction of Till Baumann—as well as the work of Berlin based theatre groups such as Masculinities LAB, Bralin, Pandeforium, and Madalena-Berlin. Participants have also the opportunity to learn interactive theatre tools and aesthetic elements of the Theatre of the Oppressed and “Teatro de las Oprimidas”, through workshops and Dramaturgy Laboratories, as well as to attend roundtables and panel discussions.
Aesthetics of Solidarity Festival is produced by KURINGA Theaterwerkstatt and takes place at UFERSTUDIOS, Badstr. 41a, Berlin, from 20–30 August 2026.
A 10-day festival of participatory theatre and expressive arts for social change.
Discover the festival programme here: