Café Stefanie / Corporate Bohème

“Neither poverty nor discontinuity is the decisive criterion for the bohemians, but the desire to freedom, which finds the courage to break social ties and to create the forms of life that oppose the slightest resistance to their inner development.”
Erich Mühsam

The historic “Café Stefanie” in the period before the First World War serves as a role model for the set, where the legendary meeting place of the Munich Bohème was restaged and revived in a nine-day theater performance. The place was run as a secred club and animated by a permanent group of performers in researched historical roles.
In order to be admitted to the cafe, every participant of this experiment was first guided blindly to the venue and is put through several gate rooms. In this initiation ritual each of the spectators was costumed and seduced to accept the role of a personality from that period. The boundaries dissolved between performers and audience, between party and historical research, performance and political debate. The result was a state of emergency that allowed to experience art as way of life. The historical example not only offered a wealth of material on a wide variety of attempts to create a unity of art and life, but also served as a projection for today’s desires.

In Stuttgart, the set was transferred to a theater space under the name “Corporate Bohème”. This gave to the event even more the character of an experiment. O-Team invented a superior system, to which the performers had obey as well as their guests. It partly released the performers from their supposed responsibilities, while at the same time allowing all participants to experience greater freedom in the creation of the evening.

Café Stefanie: January 2015 at a secret location in the center of Munich
Corporate Bohème: February 2015, OST Stuttgart

by and with:
Michael Bartels, Antonia Beermann, Frank Deesz, Harry Delgas, Anna Donderer, Folkert Dücker, Ruth Geiersberger, Benno Heisel, Samuel Hof, Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, Leah Lichtwitz, Nina Malotta
Katja Kettner/Tine Elbel (Produktion München) Markus Niessner (Grafik/ Produktion Stuttgart) Kathrin Schäfer (PR/ÖA)

A projekt by O-Team and Pathos München. Funded by the Fonds Doppelpass of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, the City of Stuttgart and the Landesverband Freier Theater Baden-Württemberg e.V.