With great collective gesture, the BlackLivesMatter movement has knocked symbols of power off their pedestals, opening up space. In multiple acts, parallel and simultaneous, new histories are being written in art and science. Initiatives and alliances are being formed to pursue self-determined politics. And every day, action is taken, hurdles are overcome, progress is made - despite adversity, delegitimization and violence. In 2013, the first festival of Black Protagonists took place at Ballhaus Naunynstraße: Black Lux - A Homeland Festival from Black Perspectives. Today, their voices form the profile of the house.

Black Berlin Black - every two years since Black Lux we combine forces for several weeks and set new accents. Theater guest performances, performances, exhibitions and concerts bring together translocally active artists and activists with the Berlin scene.

Over four months, from November 2022 to February 2023, we set impulses. The focus is on resistance: forms of resistance; of remembering what should be forgotten; of saying what should remain hidden in silence; of taking what should be exclusive; of doing together where loneliness should reign.

And so we open Black Berlin Black - Widerstand with a guest performance from Brazil, a counter-interpretation of a classic of white theater history. Directed by José Fernando Peixoto de Azevedo, it becomes a representation of black reality: Navalha na Carne Negra.

In Even At The Risk, Melanelle B. C. Hémêfa, Ana Lucão, Josephine Papke, Stefanie-Lahya Aukongo and TRVΛNIΛ present their new texts. Spoken Word: taking the word and the interpretive authority and sharing the thoughts, sentences, wishes, demands with the audience for the common moment - this is the risk and the moment of success! In December, Jean-Paul Bourelly invites musicians from the surroundings of Ballhaus Naunynstraße to a public, jammed, co-composed exchange of experiences. And the performer Ana Pi also pursues the goal of generating knowledge and passing it on as inspiration. Here, in The Divine Cypher, she searches Haiti's sacred heritage for the cypher, the code of gestures and signs to perpetuate tomorrow. Her performance The Divine Cypher will be shown for the first time in Germany.