Show Me A Good Time
June 20, 2020, 6pm
HAU Hebbel am Ufer
HAU1, Stresemannstr. 29, 10963 Berlin
HAU2, Hallesches Ufer 32, 10963 Berlin
HAU3, Tempelhofer Ufer 10, 10963 Berlin
T +49 30 25900427
tickets [at] hebbel-am-ufer.de
12 hour livestream performance / Premiere / Part of #HAUonline / Tickets
Show Me A Good Time is a unique 12 hour live-streamed performance. Join us for as long as you like between the hours of 6pm–6am (Berlin time) as we journey through the midsummer night together.
All we have left is now. Show Me A Good Time is set in a moment when the pause button has been pressed on the society of acceleration in which technology, fashion, social habits, financial markets and fake news all seem to be developing and changing at an ever faster rate. Within this pause, “The Present” is locked down and stuck in a perpetual selfie, staring at themselves on a filtered screen, listening to a mindfulness app on continuous repeat. They sooth themselves with mantras: if they can just be the best version of themselves, they will be fine, everything will be OK. Just carry on as usual, it will all be fine. In this “selfie emergency” Gob Squad understand that there is no going back to the way things were: reversibility is impossible. What is to be done? How can they heal “The Present” from its self-imposed procrastination?
For over 25 years, Gob Squad have been blurring the boundaries of art, theatre and real life. Sometimes they perform on the streets or in other public non-theatre locations. Sometimes they use cameras to bring the urban jungle, with all its danger, beauty and messiness, into the comfort of a theatre. Often they do both simultaneously.
In Show Me A Good Time, Gob Squad send out time-travelling, shape-shifting explorers into a strangely unfamiliar reality, to find out how to go on and where, amongst the dust and the dirt, a good time might be found again. Their mission reveals an alien world of habits, signs and symbols that once seemed to make sense but now only evokes a time already passed. With the benefit of hindsight and the optimism of the future, Gob Squad warp time, and completely rethink the clock.
Production: Gob Squad. World premiere co-commissioned and co-produced by: HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), La Jolla Playhouse Without Walls Series (San Diego). Co-production: Mousonturm (Frankfurt), Schlachthaus Theater Bern, Internationales Sommerfestival Kampnagel (Hamburg). Supported by: Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Gob Squad is funded by: Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.