Performance festival “Unidram” Potsdam: A change of scenery without gravity

Art can, indeed should, shift our perceptions. This is currently working very well at the “Unidram” festival in Potsdam. On the first two days you could see people simply disappearing through walls. Houses collapsing in slow motion and melancholy wallpaper rolling off the walls to which they are actually stuck. This is what happened with the material theater piece “Staub” by the Stuttgart O-Team, which is known for its elaborately designed stage spaces.

The trained acrobat Tobias Wegner went one better with his cult piece “Leo”. In a sophisticated arrangement consisting of a room in which the artist mainly performed lying on the floor and a projection room tilted by 90 degrees, the laws of gravity were no longer in force. When the actor, who was lying flat on the floor in real space, quickly lifted his legs, his back appeared to be stuck to the wall in the projection room next to it - but his feet had definitely come off the floor.

Wegner also exploited the 90 degree shift in gravity with water that suddenly splashed horizontally and objects that returned horizontally. The boundaries between two- and three-dimensionality also dissolved. The acrobat could simply sit on a chair painted sideways on the wall or pull himself up along the wall using a window sash that was also drawn.

Unidram Festival, until November 7, 2026, Potsdam, “Kultur-Areal Schiffbauergasse”

One often didn't know what to be more amazed about: the acrobatic skills of the performer, who performed so perfectly while lying down that the movements in the project room tilted at 90 degrees looked incredibly natural, or the effects of floating and flying in the twin universe.

The fact that “Leo” even ended up at Unidram was also like an act of magic. “Violent”, the wild image transformation show by the Breton Sociéteé Protectrice de Petites Ideés, was actually planned as the opening production. But then the group had to cancel due to an accident. “We had the information at nine on Friday morning and the solution at four in the afternoon,” said festival co-curator Jens-Uwe Sprengel to the taz.

It was only possible because of the huge network that those responsible have built up over the more than three decades of their work; and also because of the acceptance they have as reliable partners on the international scene. “We then used Saturday to go through everything, from accommodation, shuttle service and food to advertising and tickets,” says Sprengel. Monday was setup, Tuesday was the first performance.

The festival continues with (almost) wordless body, sound and spatial art that amazes the eyes and ears. Sprengel is particularly looking forward to the installation journey to the former New York amusement park Coney Island Beach with the production “Dreamland” by the Canadian Théatre Rude Ingeniérie (November 5th – 7th) and the opulent music performance “Spring Is Possible” by the Belgian group bodybody (November 7th). A special experiment is the sound-dance performance “Meta” by the Iranian-Dutch Oriantheater Dance Company (November 7th), staged on a newly built five-meter-high staircase.

The total of nine productions at the five-day festival have very distinctive artistic signatures. But they all invite you to let yourself be enchanted, sometimes in a very subtle way, sometimes in a sheer overwhelming way.