Play by Sophia Süßmilch: A lot of nudity and yet too little anger

It was a good two years ago that an exhibition by the artist Sophia Süßmilch in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, brought the local CDU to the fore. The district association and parliamentary group called for a boycott of the art gallery. The accusation: Süßmilch propagates cannibalism, her art is disturbing, not just for children, but unacceptable overall. Self-proclaimed moralizers then sent the artist death threats. The CDU was unable to prevail, but the unpleasant case made headlines across the country and made Süßmilch known beyond the bubble.

Anyone who has ever seen one of her performances, in which the artist likes to pose half-naked with extra breasts, rat tail, in a pile of flower-decorated butter or any other grotesque, screamingly comic arrangement with a decidedly feminist impetus, will not forget it in a hurry anyway.

Süßmilch, born in 1983 in Dachau, Bavaria, studied sculpture in Vienna and later media art in Karlsruhe. She now lives in Berlin and does everything possible with her art: paints, builds sculptures, performs, draws, writes, films and photographs. Last year, at Berlin Art Week, she and the artist Cathrin Hoffmann staged a group exhibition that was at risk of gentrification in her studio, which was threatened by gentrification. There was also a performance evening, but you could hardly see anything because it was too crowded.

A much better view was now offered on Saturday evening in Berlin's Hebbel am Ufer at the premiere of Süßmilch's first full-length play: "Something terrible will happen: The Man-Eater" was announced as a theatrical treatise on female anger with a cannibal at the center - there were no protests in advance this time - who "no longer becomes an object of consumption, but herself a consuming subject".

As a woman in general and as Sophia Süßmilch in particular, there are plenty of reasons to be angry. However, Süßmilch provides a brief introduction in the role of narrator before things really get started. At some point, “the woman” decided to squeeze 500 people into a “musty old building” to tell them their stories, so that afterwards “at least one of the people would set the place on fire and maybe continue on the street,” she says. It's well received, the audience laughs a lot. It's day 5 of the Berlin Art Week, anyone sitting there has already experienced a lot, the Art Nouveau theater has the smell of a pub that hasn't been ventilated for a long time.

When artists are driven to the theater, it sometimes goes completely wrong. A stage works differently than a gallery space; above all, it needs a dramaturgy and a functioning production. Süßmilch does all of this pretty well. The costumes, props and stage design alone are great - the Charleston is danced in circus tents, which cover the face like burkas, but sometimes expose the bottom at the back. Süßmilch appears painted Smurf blue, otherwise naked, with a six-pack of breasts, the performers as evil clowns with nasty grins painted on their faces, at some point it rains giant teddy bears.

The piece has rigor. There are a few lengths, but then she always manages to pick one up again. For example, when you just thought, irritated, that it could be over because the curtain suddenly closed. The real climax follows: the resurrection of the monster, of course it is a female one, made from dissected teddy bears and black tape, collectively held up on poles by the actresses.

In general, it is their interaction, in which Süßmilch often remains unobtrusively in the background, and the music that carry the piece. There's a lot of singing and really good singing, from Verdi's "La Donna è mobile" to songs specially composed by Ilgen-Nur Borali or Henrike Henoch to Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart", accompanied by piano, guitar and violin.

“Something Terrible Will Happen: The Man-Eater” is also strong when Süßmilch targets himself – or allows himself to be targetted. When it comes to self-deprecation about the obligatory nudity in feminist theater or the blind spots in activism.

Sophia Süßmilch's piece is a lot of fun, but it doesn't quite work. Did she perform too well in the end? Should she have turned more freely? Or was it the content that skimmed too close to the surface? A little more anger, less explanation would have helped the whole thing. Sophia wanted to avoid things becoming too didactic at all costs, explains Lucia Peraza Rios, one of the performers, at one point. Sweet milk would have stuck to it better. In the end, no one set the place on fire. And there were no incidents on the road either.