Air Mass
{{ time.start_TS | TS2dateFormat('MMM') }}
{{ time.start_TS | TS2dateFormat('YYYY') }}
| 20 EUR / reduced 10 EUR |
| Please book your ticket in advance online or at the box office in the foyer. |
| Artist talk following the performance on Oct 1 |
| English, German, Mandarin with German and English surtitles |
| 12 years and older |
| Ground Floor, Schlüter Courtyard, Hall 1, Ground Floor |
| Belongs to: Transkontinentale 2026 |
The present seems to be in a state of limbo. China’s ascent is redefining Asia, and with it, Europe. Is the Western-dominated world order under threat? Will a conflict in Eurasia constitute the world’s ‘last great war’?
A hundred years ago, Alfred Döblin described these conditions in his futuristic novel Mountains Oceans Giants as a ’factual fantasy’: a relentless chain of climate catastrophes and continental drift, as well as crises, pandemics, and global economic crises. In 1924, Döblin offered a vision of a war between Europe and Asia and Europe’s great exodus to Greenland.
Now, the Sino-German Paper Tiger Theater Studio has adapted this material for the stage. The performance, co-produced with the festival Theater der Welt Chemnitz 2026, creates a world of images and sound featuring plenty of movement and using means that are both astonishingly simple and sensuous. The visual concept is by China’s most famous contemporary artist, Ai Weiwei. Five dancers, performers and singers from China and Germany work with videography and spatial design. Their bodies, shaped by diverse cultural backgrounds and contemporary discourses, embody the conflicting emotions between bleak visions of the future and the reality of the present. Chinese, German, English and other languages from various cultures interweave to form a multi-layered tapestry of sound.
The Paper Tiger Theater Studio ensemble exists between worlds. Its productions emerge from a constant dialogue between German and Chinese history and stories. In Berlin, it most recently presented its restaurant project 10,000 Noodles for Kafka and, as a commissioned production for the Humboldt Forum, Revolution. The Foe of an Arrow Wound.
Cast
With: Bechter Elena, Wang Yanan, Sheyang Sibo, Li Jingwen, Fu-Hsuan Shih
Director, Text: Tian Gebing
Choreography, Producer: Wang Yanan
Dramaturgy: Christoph Lepschy
Music: Piotr Kurek
Assistant Directors, Interpreters: Li Jingwen, Xie Yuchen
Lighting Design: Zhao Tong, Bastian Vogel
Set and Costume Design: Paper Tiger Theater Studio
Set Design Support: Wang Tiange
Video: Tong Xin
Project Assistant: Feng Wanqi
Visual Concept: Ai Weiwei
Supported by:
Zhong Ben Zhi
AWW Germany GmbH
Shenzhen Ming Culture Communication Co. LTD
Co-production:
THEATER DER WELT Chemnitz 2026 Festival
Humboldt Forum Berlin
Paper Tiger Theater Studio
Performance rights for the excerpts from Alfred Döblin’s Mountains Oceans Giants are held by Gustav Kiepenheuer Bühnenvertriebs GmbH, Berlin
With generous support of: Zhong Ben Zhi, AWW Germany GmbH, Shenzhen Ming Culture Communication Co. LTD
Koproduktion: Festival Theater der Welt Chemnitz 2026, Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss, Paper Tiger Theater Studio
Elena Bechter is the founder, managing director and co-artistic director of Company ART // 2020, the Bregenzerwald Festival and the BeClose Festival, as well as project manager of the Laboratory for New Music Theatre. She has been collaborating with the Paper Tiger Collective since 2020. As a singer, performer and dramaturg, she moves between traditional and contemporary music theatre, chamber music, experimental dance and movement theatre, and multidisciplinary performing arts, and has already staged several of her own works. She is an academician and scholarship holder at TONALi, as well as a prize-winner at the International Singing Competition of the Accademia Belcanto in Graz. Her engagements have taken her to venues including the Elbphilharmonie, the Theater der Welt in Chemnitz, the Nationaltheater Mannheim, the Theater Brandenburg an der Havel, as well as to Liedstadt, the TONALi Festival and the International Chamber Festival Capo di Leuca in Italy.
Elena Bechter – Soprano/Performer
Berlin-based performer whose practice moves fluidly across dance, theatre, performance art, fashion presentation, choreography, and dance film.
The work is driven by an interest in how the body holds memory, emotion, and imagination, tracing the threshold where reality meets fiction, and making inner landscapes perceptible through movement.
Piotr Kurek is a Warsaw-based musician, multi-instrumentalist andcomposer. Known for working as a solo musician and in various collaborations, he has released music on Edições CN, Mondoj, Hands In The Dark, Black Sweat Records, Dunno, Sangoplasmo and other labels.
Kurek has performed extensively, presenting his work at numerous music festivals like Unsound, CTM, OFF, TodaysArt and UH Fest, as well as on extensive tours in Poland and abroad. He is an alumnus of OneBeat by
Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation. In recent years, he was also invited to residencies at EMS in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Gyeonggi Creation Center in Ansan, South Korea.Since 2016, he has collaborated with Paper Tiger Theater Studio on five works.
Christoph Lepschy, Dramaturg and Professor for dramaturgy, studied at University of Munich (Germany) and Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and graduated in literature and theatre studies. Since 1996 he worked as dramaturg at several municipal and state theatres and developed numerous international performance projects. Since 2005 he is intensively involved in Chinese theatre and collaborated with several Chinese theatre artists. Since 2012 he is continuously working with Paper Tiger Theater Studio. 2009 he has been appointed professor for dramaturgy at University Mozarteum Salzburg (Thomas-Bernhard-Institut). A focus of his work is the development of international and transcultural higher education in the performing arts. He gave lectures and workshops on dramaturgy and transcultural performance practice at theatre academies, universities and cultural institutions in many Chinese cities as well as in Hongkong and Taiwan. Additionally he published several articles in periodicals and books. 2019 he has been elected as chair of the senate of Mozarteum University Salzburg.
Li Jingwen is a researcher and theatre practitioner based in Berlin. She is currently finishing her PhD in Media Studies at the University of Potsdam, where her dissertation The Dispositif of the Virtual investigates the ontology of generative AI systems. Before Potsdam she studied at Humboldt University Berlin. Alongside her academic work, she has been involved in theatre and performance practice for several years, working with Paper Tiger Theater Studio on stage as well as behind the scenes, including Humboldt Forum’s production Revolution: Stachel im Fleisch. Her interest in theatre comes from the same place as her research, a curiosity about how spaces, bodies, and technical systems produce meaning together. Jingwen Li — virtuality, media theory, digital art practice
SheYang Sibo (Pronouns: It/Its), born in 1996, a descendant of the Hengduan Mountains. Its mother comes from Liangshan Mountain range, and father from the Wumeng Mountain range. It descends from the Nuosu (Yi) people of Wumeng, a branch of the ancient southwestern Yi ethnicity, and is the 58th generation of the Zi mo lineage. From a young age, it practiced painting and moved back and forth between high mountains, canyons, and urban skyscrapers, engaging in reality through actions, events, vedio, poetry, installations, sound, and other means.
Tian Gebing, theatre director and producer, has been a leading figure in China’s independent theatre scene since the 1990s.
In 1997, he founded Paper Tiger Theatre Studio, a platform that brings together performers, dancers, writers, musicians, visual artists, and people from diverse backgrounds to collaborate on creative projects. Many of his works have been presented internationally.
Since 2010, he has increasingly devoted himself to cross-cultural theatre practice. His major works include Totally Happy (2014, Munich–Beijing), a co-production with the Münchner Kammerspiele, followed by Dekalog (2016, Stary Teatr, Kraków) and 500 Metres: Kafka, the Great Wall, Images of an Illusory World and Heroism in Everyday Life (2017, Thalia Theater Hamburg / Theater der Welt 2017).
Since 2019, he has lived and worked between Berlin and Beijing, entering a new phase of his artistic practice under the manifesto “Theatre Between Worlds.” His works from this period include Infection, State of Emergency and Beethoven (2020, Shenzhen–Berlin), Heart Chamber Fragments (2021, Münchner Kammerspiele), Aufhebung (2021, Berlin), Her Face (2022, Berlin), Revolution.The Foe Of An Arrow Wound (2023, Humboldt Forum, Berlin), and 10,000 Noodles for Kafka (2024, Berlin).
Wang Yanan graduated from the Beijing Dance Academy and was a principal dancer with the China National Song and Dance Ensemble. She received the Wenhua Award, China’s highest national award for the performing arts, as well as the ZKB Award at the Zürcher Theater Spektakel.
In 2004, she founded Le Se Dance Studio. Her choreographic works have toured internationally. Her artistic practice centres on the body and explores the relationships between the individual, society, and technological environments.
Since 2001, she has contributed to Paper Tiger Theatre Studio’s artistic projects as a choreographer, dancer, and producer. Her works include Iron Horse (2014, Hong Kong Arts Festival), Totally Happy (2014, Münchner Kammerspiele), Dekalog (2016, Stary Teatr, Kraków), 500 Metres (2017, Thalia Theater Hamburg / Wuzhen Theatre Festival), Infection, State of Emergency and Beethoven (2020, Berlin–Shenzhen), Disengage (2021, Berlin), Her Face (2022, Berlin), Revolution.The Foe Of An Arrow Wound (2023, Humboldt Forum, Berlin), 10,000 Noodles for Kafka (2024, Berlin), and Luftmasse (2026, Theater der Welt Chemnitz / Humboldt Forum, Berlin).
Yuchen is a Berlin-based dancer and choreographer. He studied Dance and Choreography at the Berlin University of the Arts / HZT Berlin. As a performer, he has appeared in works by choreographer Hannah Schillinger and directors Mehran Sherkat Naderi and Dora Yueming Cheng. Since 2023, he has been involved in various areas of theatre practice with the Paper Tiger Theater Studio. Working both onstage and behind the scenes, he has contributed to productions including Her Face, 10,000 Noodles for Kafka, and Revolution.The Foe Of An Arrow Wound at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin.He also works at the intersection of dance and visual art. In 2024, he collaborated with artist Zhenru Liang on the installation project Temporary Theater, which was presented in several European cities. Before pursuing a career in dance, Yuchen studied communication design and worked at the renowned Atelier Brückner in Stuttgart, contributing to numerous exhibition design projects.
Accesibility Information
Brief description in plain language
“Luftmasse” is a play. Five people from China dance, sing and act. They use their bodies to express powerful emotions and speak in different languages. Videos are shown on a wall in the background. The audience gathers at the Mechanische Arena in the Foyer and then walks together to the Schlüterhof. The first 30 minutes of the play take place there in the open air. Afterwards, the performance continues in Hall 1. The play lasts two hours in total. There are no intervals.
The play is about the future. What will our world look like? What will happen to Europe and Asia? And what happens if there is a war? The play explores fears and hopes. In doing so, it also tells us about the world we live in today.
The writer Alfred Döblin from Berlin wrote the book “Mountains, Seas and Giants” 100 years ago. The book is about war, natural disasters, and a great flight. The theatre company Paper Tiger Theater Studio has adapted it into a play.
Sensory stimuli
The performance involves the use of materials that have strong odors. There may be dust or powder in the room. Stage fog is used. There are sections with sudden changes in lighting and spotlights. There are sections during which it is completely dark.
There is loud music and unexpected and repetitive sounds. The performers on stage move quickly at times. Projections are used.
Atmosphere
The audience is asked to remain quiet. The lights are dimmed or switched off completely. There are sections where it is bright light, and sections where it is loud. During the first part outdoors, there may be draughts or light rain. The second section has chairs with backrests and stools.
Accessibility
The play features dialogue in German, English and Chinese. Surtitle translations are available in English and German. The first part of the play (approx. 30 minutes) takes place outdoors in the Schlüterhof. The first part will go ahead outdoors even in light rain. The audience will be standing – there will be no seating available for this part. If you require a seat, please speak to the staff on site.
There are spaces for wheelchair users and an accessible toilet. We also offer a changing places toilet (”Toilette für alle”)
Content Notes
The audience is asked to remain quiet. The audience stands for the first 30 minutes; after that, they must remain seated throughout. The performance contains depictions of physical violence and war. The play deals with intense emotions. Some of the performers are temporarily nude. During the performance, alcoholic drinks will be offered to the audience.