From January 7 to 26, 2025, Micha Goldberg & Rosie Sommers, in collaboration with Ward Weemhoff (De Warme Winkel), will be guests in Hall 1 at S.M.A.K. In their project Drama in the Museum, they explore how repertoire theater can be presented as an exhibition. They place dramatic versions of repertoire pieces in a museum context, stripping away the illusions of the black box.

They are developing a performance that functions as an exhibition, lasting eight hours (10 AM–6 PM), viewable during the museum’s opening hours. Rehearsals will also be part of this performative exhibition.

An exhibition of living ‘objects’ operates differently in the white cube than in the black box. Their research into repertoire as a dramatic object creates a fascinating blur between event-time and exhibition-time, merging and questioning theatrical and museum contexts.

In the next phase, they will collaborate with visual artist Carolin Gieszner, who experiments with museum spaces and audience arrangements as autonomous works.

By placing repertoire in the museum’s transparent setting, they aim to spark a conversation about the aliveness of art and drama as an object. They bring the cathartic intensity of theater into the museum, questioning when modern art becomes a relic of the past and when repertoire remains relevant.

Inspired by the happenings of the 1960s, they seek to challenge the sterile atmosphere of contemporary museums. Theater brings vitality, chaos, and emotion. The feelings expressed in their versions of repertoire pieces are like those in a painting—but now experienced live. Theater offers the museum a kind of animalistic joy, an emotional eruption that cuts through its clinical environment.

They will showcase different aspects of theater: setup, warm-ups, rehearsals, performances, and post-show discussions will all have a place. The museum invites theater as a living object, to be examined from all angles—something museums excel at.