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The 5th Season – Fat Tuesday

Projects 2025 | Round 15
 
Coproduction partners: dissonart ensemble (Greece), Stage Cultopia (Greece), Novoflot (Germany)

The 5th Season – Fat Tuesday: A performer in a red jacket looks up toward several large video screens on the floor, displaying black-and-white faces of people in conversation. The lighting is cool and blue-toned.

A performer in a red jacket looks up toward several large video screens on the floor, displaying black-and-white faces of people in conversation. The lighting is cool and blue-toned. | © Falko Siewert

The 5th Season – Fat Tuesday: A person wearing a brightly lit clown mask with glowing blue outlines plays an electric keyboard. The scene is dimly lit, with a microphone visible nearby.

A person wearing a brightly lit clown mask with glowing blue outlines plays an electric keyboard. The scene is dimly lit, with a microphone visible nearby. | © Falko Siewert

The 5th Season – Fat Tuesday: Several performers lie on a stage covered in a patterned light projection. They wear colorful costumes and masks, with props like hats and a table of objects scattered around.

Several performers lie on a stage covered in a patterned light projection. They wear colorful costumes and masks, with props like hats and a table of objects scattered around. | © Falko Siewert

The 5th Season – Fat Tuesday: A performer with curly blond hair sings passionately into a microphone under colorful stage lights, while another person plays the piano beside them. A third performer crouches nearby in dramatic lighting.

A performer with curly blond hair sings passionately into a microphone under colorful stage lights, while another person plays the piano beside them. A third performer crouches nearby in dramatic lighting. | © Falko Siewert

The renowned Berlin-based independent performing arts company Novoflot returns to the GNO Alternative Stage with its new production, The 5th Season – Fat Tuesday, a music-theatre interpretation of international carnival cultures. Carnival is an invention for otherworldly contributions to discourse, a means of expressing oneself beyond conventional rhetoric, allowing today’s laughter in mask and costume to give way to tomorrow’s reflection. This project is Novoflot’s artistic mouthpiece in times of profound paralysis and speechlessness and an opportunity, in the face of international crises, to develop a new music-theatrical discourse exploring new fields of utopia. “It is complicated to express oneself politically. Even more difficult is finding common ground. This is a first attempt!” Drawing on the traditions of the legendary Mardi Gras movement in New Orleans, Novoflot’s Athenian Fat Tuesday becomes the starting point and gathering place for the founding of several highly musical “Magic Societies,” whose unusual and dazzling performances herald the carnival of the future. Together with the ensemble Dissonart, a vocal and performance ensemble, soloists from the international jazz scene, and musicians from the Athenian scene, a hybrid music-theatre work will emerge with more than 100 participants. The production blends contemporary music and jazz, Renaissance carnival music and band elements, political speeches, and world premieres by Antonis Anissegos (Greece) and Michael Wertmüller (Switzerland).

Projects 2025 | Round 15

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