What happens when three worlds collide in a surreal photo studio? When Pete from Nairobi and Kathi from Munich arrive at Stevan’s studio in former Yugoslavia with their shared vision of the “Giraiffel Tower”, their imagined “Paris of the Savannah”, reality and fantasy will blur in unexpected ways. Set in the confines of Stevan’s photo studio, where he does his job reproducing images, but as the images begin to multiply, so do the questions: What are we really seeing? Who decides how a story is told? And what lies behind the fantasies we project onto each other?
THIS PLOT IS NOT FOR SALE promises to be an absurd fairytale that refuses easy answers. In the confines of a photo studio where images multiply and meanings shift; this upcoming international collaboration will explore the dangerous territory between the stories we project onto others and the truths we desperately avoid confronting about ourselves.
A Linguistic Journey Through Identity
This is not a play that will take the easy way out with English alone. Instead, audiences will be immersed in a symphony of German, English, Kisii and Serbian, experiencing firsthand what it means to sit in a room and truly listen to different languages. Each tongue carries its own cultural weight, its own way of seeing the world, creating an authentic multilingual experience that mirrors our globalized reality. It’s a piece that resists the flattening of global culture into one dominant language or viewpoint. And in doing so, it opens space for something rare: a genuine conversation about how we see, and fail to see, each other.
The deliberate use of multiple languages becomes more than artistic choice; it becomes a statement about communication, understanding, and the spaces between cultures where meaning is both lost and found.
Why This Production Matters
The collaboration between writers Gisemba Ursula, Theresa Seraphin, and Denijen Pauljević represents a unique artistic convergence. This Nairobi-Munich partnership brings together perspectives that have never shared the same creative space, promising audiences something genuinely unprecedented in contemporary theater.
While themes of identity and stereotypes are well-trodden ground, this production will approach them through the specific lens of image reproduction and the de/construction of how we see “the other.” In our age of social media and instant global communication, these questions have never been more urgent.
The production promises to fuse visual spectacle with deep memory work, creating a theatrical experience that will engage both the senses and the intellect. The photo studio setting becomes a character itself, a space where reality bends and multiplies, where the distance between projection and truth becomes uncomfortably clear.
This ambitious international production is made possible through the generous support of the Department of Arts and Culture of the City of Munich, Division 3, with additional backing from the Association of Independent Performing Arts Bavaria (Verband freie Darstellende Künste Bayern e.V.) as part of the process funding program “Freie Kunst 2025,” utilizing funds from the Bavarian State Ministry for Science and the Arts. The production represents a true collaborative effort, brought to life through co-production partnerships with the Goethe Institute’s International Coproduction Fund, SPIELART Festival, Pathos Theater, and Bellevue di Monaco.
In a world saturated with images and stories about “the other,” THIS PLOT IS NOT FOR SALE will dare to ask: What lies behind the pictures we create? What truths do our projections reveal about ourselves? Join Pete, Kathi, and Stevan on the 26 & 27 September, 2025 at 7:00 PM at German Cultural Centre (Goethe-Institut Nairobi), Starehe, Kenya, as they navigate the treacherous terrain between fantasy and reality, between the stories we tell and the lives we actually live.
This plot may not be for sale, but the questions it will raise are priceless.
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