One-night text and performance piece by Berlin artist Jäckie Rydz, a queer manifesto against bureaucratic dehumanization, with choreography by Pamela Moraga.
Jäckie Rydz brings Olympia to Volcano Theatre on Friday 6 November, and it's the only UK performance of the piece. Rydz is a Berlin-based artist, and Olympia is a queer manifesto against bureaucratic dehumanisation, built as a performative strategy to subvert state control through disclosure and poetic subversion. It runs 50 minutes, in German and English with English subtitles.
The work draws a direct line from the institutional violence of international sport to the bureaucratic violence of medical transition processes. It reaches back to the Nazis' Olympic gender control in 1936 and forward to the media smear campaign against athletes like Imane Khelif at the 2024 Olympics, combining personal pain, collective queer history and political analysis. It was commissioned by Ballhaus Ost Berlin for the Sportfest Festival and funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin; Volcano Theatre is presenting it here with support from the Goethe Institut.
Rydz handles the text and performance, and the rest of the production is a proper ensemble: choreography by Pamela Moraga, concept by Greta Katharina Klein and Rydz, with an outside eye from Ozi Ozar, voice-over by Jakob Rydz, a Beethoven remix by Martix Navrot and images by Dorothea Tuch. It's a one-night-only show, so if you want to see it, this is the only chance it'll be on a UK stage.
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Beyond this one night, Rydz is also working with Volcano's director Paul Davies on a new R&D project, so this is just the start of their time in Swansea. Olympia runs for 50 minutes, in German and English with English subtitles, at Volcano Theatre on Swansea High Street.
