– Please note that strobe lighting is used during the performance!

In German with English surtitles

Portrait performances are risky. For the theatre and for the artists. This applies to professionals as well.  And Maya Alban-Zapata is a professional: Paris bequeathed her a dramatic stage, and Berlin gave her a big mouth. In drama school, she learned fencing, everyday racism taught her to fight. In show business, she fought her way through, enjoying everything from musicals to the opening act for Mika. On German stages, she competes with big names, and as a mother of two, she knows that the future must be fought for. Nothing is given.

If you’re lucky, you grow from it. If you have connections that help you grow: avant-garde grandmothers, temporary fathers, musical role models, cosmopolitan environments, Afro-diasporic networks. If you have people who are very special, who empower you. Is it possible to make a solo piece about connections? Maya Alban-Zapata carries the hyphen, that is crucial for the diaspora, that connects Afro and Berliner, art and resistance, A and Z, already in her name. Now she has taken the risk: Someone Very Special – it has become a sort of particle accelerator demonstrating the hyphen’s galacic-feminist power.

With the PORTRAIT series, where artists introduce themselves and their work, Ballhaus Naunynstraße interrupts the usual production process. Here, it’s not about the role profile, about what one has always done, because directors and producers see it “in” you, but rather it’s about what one wants to tell. PORTRAIT offers the space to showcase oneself, one’s talents, one’s art, and what truly matters to you. PORTRAIT is an invitation to the audience to meet artists and experience the complexity of their art.