Florentina Holzinger and her team opened the Volksbühne’s new season with a spectacular ritual of cleansing, as naked performers rappelled down the building and scrubbed its façade while fountains of water rose above Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. The performance also marked the beginning of Matthias Lilienthal’s first season as artistic director.
Starting at 6 p.m., House Wash used the Volksbühne itself as its stage, bringing the theatre’s temporary public swimming pool to its final moment. Performers cleaned the roof and façade as water surged into the air above the square.
An enormous naked female torso from Holzinger’s A Year Without Summer, modelled on Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the World, dominated the roof. Water streamed from the sculpture in a dramatic arc, lending the scene a distinctly ceremonial quality.
“The building needs to be cleaned to make room for new ideas,” one performer called from the roof. The gesture framed the season opening as a secular rite: a physical cleansing before a new artistic chapter.
