ugly duckling

In the organizer's words:

"I never dreamed of so much happiness when I was the ugly little duckling." In Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, one repeatedly encounters transformations: The little mermaid transforms into a human being, the ugly duckling into a proud swan. The fact that these transformations are also a masked game with gender and sexuality is the starting point for a project that juxtaposes Andersen's fairy tales with the biographies of Berlin drag queens. These protagonists of urban nightlife turn the game with gender roles into a liberating spectacle. In doing so, they move along the shimmering border between shameless self-promotion and subcultural sense of mission. The transformation by means of make-up and wigs produces not only a new self, but also a new self-confidence. The artificial figure created in this way is the proud swan, in whose guise the ugly duckling can face the world. For his production ugly duckling, Bastian Kraft was awarded the Ehrenstöckel by Travestie für Deutschland in 2019. All performances are shown with English surtitles. Note: Strobe lights will be used in the performance. This content has been machine translated.