Concept: Gob Squad / Performance and and development: Johanna Freiburg, Sean Patten, Sharon Smith, Berit Stumpf, Nina Tecklenburg, Sarah Thom, Laura Tonke, Bastian Trost, Simon Will, Erik Pold (the cast changes with each guest performance) / Video design: Miles Chalcraft / Sound design: Jeff McGrory / Production Manager and dramaturgy: Christina Runge / Stage design realization: Chasper Bertschinger / Artistic collaboration: Sophia Simitzis / Gob Squad management team: Heleen De Boever, Caroline Gentz, Talea Schuré, Grischa Schwiegk
Gob Squad
Gob Squad’s Kitchen (You’ve Never Had It So Good)
- Theatre
German /
English /
approx. 100 mins.
The award-winning classic finally returns to HAU after more than 200 performances worldwide! Inspired by Andy Warhol’s early films, Gob Squad take a trip back in time to the New York underground scene of the 1960s, back to when the future was bright and everything was about to begin ...
If tomorrow I find somebody who is pretty much like me and I put her here to sing, she can be Nico while I go and do something else. – Nico
It’s 1965 and everything is just about to happen. Pop, subculture, superstars, feminism, drugs, bright lights, and sex are about to rock the world like never before. Gob Squad take the hand of Andy Warhol and take a trip back to the underground cinemas of New York City, back to where it all began. “Gob Squad’s Kitchen” takes one of Warhol’s films, Kitchen, as its starting point. Nothing much happens in the original film yet it somehow encapsulates the hedonistic experimental energy of the swinging sixties. Learning lines was considered ‘old fashioned’ so the actors just hang around. Sex, drugs and wild parties are referred to but nothing in particular takes place. As Edie Sedgwick, one of the film’s stars, says “I live my part too – only I can’t figure out what my part is in this movie.”
Gob Squad set themselves the task of reconstructing Kitchen and other Warhol films Eat, Sleep and Screen Test. How can they get it just right? How do they know if they’re going wrong? How did people dance in 1965? What did they talk about? Had feminism happened? Or was it yet to begin? Gob Squad’s Kitchen becomes a journey back in time and back to the future again. A quest for the original, the authentic, the here and now, the real me, the real you and the hidden depths beneath the shiny surfaces of modern life.
After over 200 performances across the world, “Gob Squad’s Kitchen” is one of the company’s most successful productions. In 2012, a three week run at the Public Theatre in New York resulted in a Drama Desk Award for “Unique Theatrical Experience”.
Premiere: 30 March 2007 at the Volksbühne in Prater, Berlin
Cast
Dates
- Current
- Past
Credits
Production: Gob Squad, Volksbühne im Prater Berlin, Donaufestival Lower Austria, Nottingham Playhouse and Fierce! Funded by: Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V., Arts Council of England. Gob Squad is funded within the Konzeptförderung (2024–2027) by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.
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Location
HAU1
Stresemannstr. 29, 10963 BerlinThere are two marked parking spots in front of the building. Access to the Parkett by means of a separate entrance with lift when necessary. Barrier-free restroom facilities are available.
