Trash City

Master Project for the M.A. Theaterpädaogik, UDK Berlin

Gastspiele in Theater FELD

Theaterpädagogik/Direction: Elly Jarvis, Tamara Bijelic

Stage and Costume: Mila Mazic

Dokumentation: Annebel Ugrinsky, Anatole Powilleit

Fotos: Robert Günzel

Trash City was a devising theater play created with 8 adults in a rehabilitation clinic. We began merely with the word “trash” and ended the two-month process with a wild post-apocalyptic tale. Eight strangers found themselves stranded in a makeshift city on a garbage dump - Trash City - a city run by a maniacal priest/nun who divided its citizens into believers and non-believers. Each character in Trash City possessed their own special material in the garbage heap: whether pipes, tires, plastic, or stuffed toys, they were defined by the material over which they reigned.

Trash City was a wild explosion of a play, with gritty characters and costumes, documentary-style live camera, karaoke to the Pet Shop Boys, a drag queen named Zementa, and a brutal breaking of the fourth wall.

Trash City was a collaborative process devised out of performative research, improvisations and storytelling. All text was written by the performers themselves and weaved together into a piece of a sweet 80 minutes run-time.