Performances

Suspect

Suspeito is the third and most recent production by Cor do Brasil, a collective of Afro-descendant artist-activists active since 2010.

The performance addresses institutional and diffuse racism: a form of racism that produces concrete racial inequality while often remaining concealed behind apparent camaraderie and meritocratic narratives.

Through Forum Theatre, situations drawn from everyday life are staged as material for collective analysis, discussion and the search for alternatives with the audience.

The production emerged from acting and dramaturgy laboratories and was created collectively. Its concept and artistic direction are by Bárbara Santos, a Black Brazilian artist and international Theatre of the Oppressed activist based in Berlin, where KURINGA is directed. The original music was also composed by Bárbara Santos.

The symbolic and diffuse expression of everyday racism is examined, including the mechanisms that make it difficult to identify and challenge.

Cast

About the group

Cor do Brasil brings together Afro-descendant artist-activists who use art to deepen and broaden public discussion about racism. The Aesthetics of the Oppressed is a central reference for the collective, alongside Black dance, sound and rhythm. Choreographed bodies, musicality and non-verbal language form a powerful visual vocabulary. The production is institutionally supported by the Centro de Teatro do Oprimido in Rio de Janeiro and is connected with the Black women’s collective Madalena Anastácia.

To Get Together

Housing justice in Berlin

Based on the true stories of people fighting for housing, the performance portrays situations that expose the structural injustices of Berlin’s real estate market.

To Get Together opens with a non-verbal choreography depicting a slow, progressive process of fear-mongering, the silencing of dissident voices, and the embrace of isolation as a means of self-protection. When the home of Blue and some friends is put at risk due to real estate speculation, this conceptual abstraction becomes an existential necessity. From this understanding, a strong movement of resistance is born.

About the ensemble

KURINGA International Ensemble, composed of artists and performers from diverse disciplines and cultural backgrounds, working at the intersection of contemporary art, social engagement and activism.

Fear Machine

Migration policies in Europe

This play proposes an aesthetic exploration of the rising popularity of right-wing populists in Europe and its concrete consequences to migrants and to everyone committed to democracy.

Fear Machine brings to the stage a sequence of events that reveals the connection between colonial history and the current expansion of anti-immigration policies in Europe. It highlights how modern borders, both concrete and symbolic, continue to be built upon the political and economic profits of colonial practices.

About the ensemble

The KURINGA International Ensemble’s work is rooted in collaboration and dialogue, positioning artistic practice as a catalyst for community involvement and social awareness.

Waterbodies

Rights of water bodies

This theatre piece stages the urgency of ensuring the fundamental rights of water: its protection, accessibility and sustainable management.

Waterbodies traces a journey from the Spree River to the Baltic Sea, uncovering stories of resilience, resistance and ecological injustice. The piece begins by evoking the human pleasure caused by contact with water, its sound, its texture and its fundamental impact on our bodies and senses.

About the ensemble

The KURINGA International Ensemble is composed of artists and performers from diverse disciplines and cultural backgrounds, working at the intersection of contemporary art, social engagement and activism.

Bralin

Work, daily oppression and collective resistance

Oppression can appear at work, in the pressure to move from one job to another, in the way someone looks at us in the street or in the supermarket, and in the assumptions made about our gender, class, migration background, language or body.

Bralin investigates how personal situations are connected to wider social structures. Through image, movement, dialogue and audience participation, the group opens an interactive theatre space to ask where oppression becomes normal, how it affects daily life, and how collective resistance and solidarity can begin.

Cast / Participants

Madalena-Berlin · Collage of Madalena

15 years of activity

Madalena-Berlin is part of the International Ma-g-dalena Network of “Teatro de las Oprimidas”, comprising feminist theatre groups from Latin America, Africa, and Europe.

Madalena-Berlin produced the first International Magdalena Festival in Berlin in 2017 and served as a co-producer for various international gatherings, seminars, and projects.

The group fosters public debate regarding the oppressions generated by patriarchy—examined through an intersectional lens—and catalyzes the search for concrete alternatives to identified injustices. With a repertoire of six theatrical productions, the group pioneered the innovative practice of Feminist Legislative Theatre.

Madalena-Berlin is the first theatre group established in Berlin by KURINGA and is celebrating 15 years of activity.

Sonha Preta( Dream black woman) Coletivo Madalena Anastacia

Sonha Preta is an artistic process initiated after the tragic outcome of a police operation in the Penha neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro in October 2025, which left 120 people dead. The work was developed as a space for reflection and mutual care in the face of a shocking event and profound collective grief. The artists of the CTO Rio collective Madalena Anastácia decided that the story needed to be told from the perspective of Black mothers. These mothers are placed at the centre of the narrative and activate a proposition-oriented dialogue in which the audience is not treated only as a consumer of an artwork, but is also invited to assume responsibility for reflection and for the search for alternatives.

Founded in Rio de Janeiro in 2015, Coletivo Madalena Anastácia uses artistic production and Teatro das Oprimidas to investigate oppressions affecting Black women. Led by Bárbara Santos and composed exclusively of Black women, the collective belongs to the Ma(g)dalena International Network and is associated with the Centro de Teatro do Oprimido.

The collective has presented its work nationally and internationally, including in Argentina, Nicaragua, Germany, the United States, Peru and Guinea-Bissau.

Its repertoire includes Consciência do cabelo aos pés (2015), Nega ou Negra? (2016), Qual é o seu lugar? (2019) and Sonha Preta (2025), as well as the performances Suspeita and Ancestrais. T

The collective received the Luísa Mahin Award in 2023 and the Heloneida Studart Diploma of Culture in 2025, and carried out artistic activities in public schools through the City of Rio de Janeiro’s Ações Locais programme in 2024.