The Ballhaus Naunynstraße stands for an artistic practice that has fundamentally changed the German-speaking theater landscape: post-migrant theater.

In this ballroom in the heart of Kreuzberg – where once royalists danced, anarchists held their meetings, which became a forced labor camp during the Nazi dictatorship, and which was condemned to oblivion during the Cold War due to its proximity to the border and almost had to yield to the vision of a car city – Shermin Langhoff made a decisive break in 2008. Although the history of immigration since the 1950s had led to Germany’s economic advancement, it had not led to cultural and political participation and the power of co-creation for immigrants or their descendants. Now, as a post-migrant theater, the Ballhaus Naunynstraße provided an institutionalized stage, a space for protagonists with immigration experience and their narratives; it offered a new cultural resonance space.

Since 2013, under the artistic direction and management of Wagner Carvalho (jointly led with Tunçay Kulaoğlu from the beginning of the 2012/13 season until Nov. 2014), Black perspectives, perspectives of Colour, and queer perspectives have increasingly come into focus. Since then, the theater has acted as a catalyst for reflecting on post-colonial structures in everyday life and art, intervening in the societal processing of Germany’s colonial past, as well as against structural racism and intersectional exclusion mechanisms. In such a structured society, the Ballhaus Naunynstraße creates a unique framework for the encounter of Black, queer, and artists of Colour, for the self-determined production of art, and for the development of their own narratives. Thereby, the Ballhaus Naunynstraße is unique in Germany and Europe.

The prerequisite for this model of the Ballhaus Naunynstraße, the prerequisite for the development of new perspectives in the performing arts, is continuity and

sustainability. Creating access for young artists and the possibility of lateral entry are therefore just as much a priority as promoting young talent through the cultural education of the academy of autodidacts. In addition, there is a continuous thematic development with in-house productions and international guest performances, with theater, dance, performances, readings, discussion events such as the 1st Indaba of Black Cultural Workers in Germany (2015), film series, concerts, specific festivals such as the international performance festival Permanent Disturbance (2018) or the sound festival Decolonial Frequencies (2021/22), and – most importantly – the biennial Black Berlin Black festival since 2013.

Black Berlin Black started in 2013 with the edition Black Lux – A Homeland Festival from Black Perspectives; this was followed by We are Tomorrow – Visions and Memories on the Occasion of the Berlin Conference of 1884 (2014/15), Republic Repair – Reparatory Imaginings from Black Berlin (2017), Postcolonial Poly Perspectives (2019), Resistance (2021/22), and United Polyphonic (2023/24). For this work, the Ballhaus Naunynstraße was honoured with the Theater Prize of the Federal Government in 2023.