prick, prick, boom

March 1988, 10:30 p.m., psychiatric clinic of Charité in East-Berlin: A young woman holds a syringe to a nurse’s neck. „I am a woman, don‘t you think?“, she’d asked on her first day on the ward. Now, three police men and a doctor gather outside her door. The doctor did not document her answer. Neither did she document if the young woman with the syringe is out for revenge or attempts resistance, if she seeks vengeance, chaos, or the answer to her question.

Rage is involuntary. It is able to consume the one who feels it and alienate the one who does not. Rage is a symptom of rupture, the result of a breakage. In rage, we come undone. Resulting from the will to keep living, to change adverse circumstances, rage is akin to desire. When rage chains us to one another, it creates a movement. In prick, prick, boom, four performers invoke bodies beyond reason. They stop to duck, to evade, to apologise for a dream of militancy and rage without consequence. Berlin is a historical site of criminalization and eradication of queer life, of the obstruction of queer collectivity. Records of disobedience are found in archives, between the lines of discharge reports, arrest records, and newspaper clippings.

Lou Thabart, Paula Pau, Adrian Marie Blount and River Roux practice derailment as resistance. Handbags become tools of defence, high heels turn into projectiles, braids into whips. To stay calm is not an option and patience is a scarce resource. „I have done all the pleading I can; demanding I can’t,“ the young woman wrote on the ward. What’s beyond the plea?

Note

We recommend a minimum age of 18 to attend the performance.

Trigger warning

Please note: prick, prick boom contains

the use of needles
self-injurious acts
explicit depictions of sexual acts
stroboscopic light

A heartfelt thank you to the historians and researchers who supported this project: Annalena Fuchs, Henriette Günther, Ulrike Klöppel, Xev Martens, Jona Diwiak and Karl-Heinz Steinle. We would also like to thank the Institut für Geschichte der Medizin und Ethik in der Medizin at Charité, the Magnus Hirschfeld Archiv and the Schwules Museum Archiv for their support.