Cotton Club - fringe ensemble

fringe ensemble with Collectif Qu’on Sonne & Voix-ailes, Ouagadougou

By and with Marcel Balboné, Leger Christian Dah, David Fischer, Eléonore Kocty, Laila Nielsen, Anthony Kibsa Ouédraogo, Abdelaziz Béranger Yameogo
Director Frank Heuel
Stage, Costumes, Video Annika Ley
Dramaturgy, Assistant Director Lutz Ackermann
Direction hospitanz Isabella Cnyrim Marchionni
Production Management Jennifer Merten
Production Management Svenja Pauka
Public Relations Claudia Grönemeyer

World premiere

Fri 03 February 2023, Theater im Ballsaal, Bonn

New York’s legendary Cotton Club developed into a meeting place for white high society and one of the most important hot spots for African-American jazz in the 1920s and 1930s. What does this famous music club in New York’s Harlem district have in common with the living situation of many people in West Africa today? And what do we have to do with it here in Europe?

Three years ago, the fringe ensemble and its artist friends from Burkina Faso dealt with the shiny gold, now they dedicate themselves to the so-called “white gold”. The ensemble weaves a performance from songs, from current documentary and literary material, which tells of belonging or not belonging, of survival and of enrichment. It’s about cotton, but it’s also about an understanding of how we want to share the planet.

The fringe ensemble invites you to an evening in the theater as well as in the club with its Burkinabe-German ensemble. An evening that moves, that stirs, that entertains!

We gratefully acknowledge the kind permission of the film rights for excerpts from the film “The Siren of Faso Fani” by Michel K. Zongo as well as the rights for text passages from the book “King Cotton – eine Geschichte des globalen Kapitalismus” by Sven Beckert, published by C.H. Beck, Munich, as well as from the lecture on the book, the rights to which are held by Godrej Archives, Mumbai.

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