I'm here in Germany in a small town called Wiesbaden and everyone here is so white and so old it feels like live sausages are walking around me talking gibberish," River Ramirez tweeted just before her appearance at the Biennale .

Take this, Wiesbaden: A few of the sausages were sitting late in the evening in the small house of the Wiesbaden State Theater and even a small handful of people who apparently also appreciate off-screen events with slam poetry, rock guitar and very special humor beyond a classic theater hall.

Eva Maria Magel

Senior cultural editor of the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

  • Follow I follow

However, it wasn't all that clear in the short hour where exactly the "anti-capitalist complaint about their Afro-Latinx non-binary trans experience" lies in Ramirez's "Ghost Folk" program, after all one hears wordy stories, for example about a Jesus - Appearance on a plantain, and rather lyrics-poor self-composed songs - and then it's over.

Also with the opening evening of the Biennale Wiesbaden, which was strangely restrained in view of the announcement that a window to another world would be opened.

Running sausages would definitely have been more spectacular.

Anti-racist performances

But at this third biennial of a new design, since saying goodbye to the proven festival "New Pieces from Europe" and after the death of curator Maria Magdalena Ludewig and the pandemic interruption in a new concept, it should not be about playing with the whole city surprising actions and installations.

Curator Kilian Engels wants to concentrate on the Staatstheater, the antithesis of everything he has invited: the Theaterfoyer and the Großes Haus as the epitome of a colonial, toxic, male-dominated Teutonic past become venues for international feminist, queer, activist, anti-racist performances.

Exactly 30 years after the founding of the once exemplary pan-European theater meeting of the "New Plays", the Biennale Wiesbaden decidedly said goodbye to any form of theater of a traditional nature: there should be no staged texts, no actors who represented the thoughts of others, said Engels, once a dramaturg at Munich Volkstheater, announced.

This has been consistently implemented.

Need for dialogic formats

Nevertheless, the short main show of the first evening, Trajal Harrell's choreography for seven dancers "The Köln Concert" from the Schauspielhaus Zürich, attracts the classic Wiesbaden theater and festival audience, the audience is a bit more mixed outside on Warmen Damm, where a small festival café on the fresh Air offers African food.

The performance "Resistencia" by the Chilean activists from Lastesis, developed with Wiesbaden residents, draws attention to violence, especially against women and queer people, and asserts the right to independence and security.

On a dance floor in the middle of the green area and very tailored to the Chilean-South American conditions, the activist effort, however, lacks its effect.

However, discussions with the audience, which were the preparation for the festival at previous biennials, are deliberately avoided: According to Engels, he wants to save his guests from having to explain racism, for example.

Apart from the vote of no confidence, which affects not only the spectators, it will be interesting to see whether this creates a strange view of the invited art.

Meanwhile, the quickly sold-out format of the city tours on Wiesbaden's colonial past shows that people's interest in the topic, sausage or not sausage, is apparently just as great as the need for dialogic formats.

Biennale Wiesbaden until September 11, Staatstheater Wiesbaden, festival gastronomy on Warmen Damm daily from 3 p.m