The Discreet Charm of Cutting Back

Fifty years after the publication of The Limits to Growth—a legendary, far-sighted report commissioned by the Club of Rome—Schorsch Kamerun goes in search of answers by interviewing Berliners about the dichotomy of growth versus cutting back, about ideas of sustainability and the common good: How can the ‘urge to expand’ be dealt with in a way that is sustainable for everyone? What strategies might have the most appeal, in spite of material cutting back? In distilling local voices, juxtaposing diverse images and scrutinising old ideals, The Discreet Charm of Cutting Back creates a music-theatre happening somewhere between concrete trauma and visionary dream. Through the overwhelming agglomeration of things and events, staged spectacles and their cessations, the audience becomes part of a community with a common understanding that change is both possible and necessary.

Musician and theatre maker Schorsch Kamerun teams up with talented collaborators to interrogate the present in which we live. Together, they probe our collective perceptions, organise direct public interventions and playfully promote participation instead of privatisation. Musically, their pieces explore the intersections between ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ music as well as written and ‘accidental’ music, crossing genres from free jazz to punk, serialism to modern classical to hypnotic electronic.


Standing places. Seating options if needed.


In German, #KOBSchallundRausch, 75 min, no intermission