- AECFest
- ASEF
- Decolonial Narratives
- NL premiere
Wait To Be Seated
What does it mean to host, and what does it mean to be a guest? In Wait To Be Seated, two feminist collectives meet on stage in an unscripted theatrical encounter. Starting from opposite positions, they challenge the rules of hospitality while searching for ways to meet in the middle.
Wait To Be Seated is a theatrical collaboration between two feminist collectives: Sandbox Collective from Bangalore and She She Pop from Berlin. The performance explores hospitality by playing with the rules of etiquette. The rules are carefully followed, but also deliberately broken. The groups take turns stepping into the roles of host and guest, revealing these roles to be both challenging and charged.
In India, the phrase Atithi Devobhava (“the guest is equal to God”) is widely known. In Karnataka, the poet Kuvempu wrote Teredide Mane O Ba Athithi, which means “the door is open, dear guest, please enter.” There is no equally open and inviting expression in German. Hospitality can therefore be complex and sometimes tense, especially when it comes to cultural codes or international encounters: full of rules, contradictions, and expectations that shift with person, place, time, and context. Yet a “good” host is expected to manage them all.
Wait To Be Seated examines these rules and asks: who do they protect, and from what? What happens when formalities are set aside? And how do power structures such as gender, race, and colonialism come into play? The performance unfolds in spaces that feel both familiar and abstract — a dining table, a red carpet, a dance floor — beginning with the two groups opposite each other, searching for ways to meet and find a middle ground.
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Credits
Idea and concept: She She Pop and Sandbox Collective
By and with: Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Raabiya Jayaram, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou, Shiva Pathak, Nimi Ravindran, Berit Stumpf
Artistic Advice: Natasha Borenko, Rodrigo Zorzanelli
Artistic Advice India: Sachin Gurjale, Vinod Ravindran, Joshua Muyiwa
Stage: Philine Rinnert
Costumes: Lea Søvsø
Costumes Assistance: Rita Rozhkova
Video Concept: Benjamin Krieg
Light Design and Technical Director: Claes Schwennen
Technical Support: Marius Bratoveanu
Light, Video & Technical Management German Tour: Marius Bratovean, Manuel Louis Horstmann, Michael Lentner, Claes Schwennen
Light, Video & Technical Management India Tour: Niranjan Gokhale
Technical and Production Assistant India: Anand Samudre
Dramaturgical Advice: Foad Esfahani
Intern: Fanny Kempter
German Live Translation: PANTHEA
Documentation India: Richa Bhavanam and Anushka Meenakshi
Social Media and Hospitality India: Leya Mammen
Coaching: Anisha Imhasly, Yumin Li
PR & Communication: ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture
PR & Communication India: Sridevi Rao
Communication: Tina Ebert
Production: Tina Ebert, Aminata Oelßner, Medha Nidhi S, Elke Weber
Company Management Sandbox Collective: Raabiya Jayaram, Shiva Pathak, Nimi Ravindran, Medha Nidhi S, Company Management She She Pop: Aminata Oelßner, Elke Weber
A production by She She Pop and Sandbox Collective in co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, FFT Düsseldorf, Schauspiel Leipzig, HELLERAU – Europäisches Zentrum der Künste & Kaserne Basel
Supported by: Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Art Research (Pondicherry) and Theaterhaus Berlin.
Funded by: the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation), the Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media) and the City of Berlin – Department for Culture and Social Cohesion Berlin.
This production was supported by the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore as part of the project Space for Freedom and Feminism.
This performance is a part of AECFest, a multidisciplinary public arts festival that alternates annually between Asia and Europe. In 2026, it will be presented as a festival-in-a-festival within SPRING, taking place from May 14 to 23. This edition marks the third consecutive year that AECFest is hosted within a major international festival platform, following editions in Italy (2024) and China (2025).
The Asia-Europe Cultural Festival (AECFest) is organized by Asia Europe Foundation with the financial support of the People’s Republic of China and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.
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