Songs Of The T-Shirt

You are wearing a T-shirt “Made in Bangladesh” on your naked skin. Since the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in 2013 that killed over 1000 people, you have a kind of diffuse sense of bad conscience about it. 32 pairs of hands have made your T-shirt. Shilpi will soon be able to afford to pay for her own marriage, but she is getting tuberculosis from inhaling all the fuzz. Although Naila has just been made supervisor, she’s going to quit her job. A star economist predicts a bright future for a proud and independent Bangladesh through the export of expensive textiles. A factory owner regards the work in his factory as a source of emancipation and dignity for his female employees.

Flinntheater went to Dhaka to sew T-shirts, they inhaled fuzz, and navigated their way through strikes and cocktail bombs, tracing the people who make our clothes. Why would you rather earn 30 than 50 dollars a month, Naila? Do you see the naked woman on the T-shirt you are sewing, Shilpi? What does it mean to work in a compliance factory, Mumtaz?

Songs Of The T-Shirt is a theatrical wandering through the global textile industry, between emancipation and exploitation, market and intimacy, Bengali mourning songs and upcycling fashion. Interviews will be reenacted, and consumption options played with, while clothes are continuously changed, following the question of whether it is morally wrong or necessary to buy a T-shirt “Made in Bangladesh”.

A Flinntheater production

Created by: Lisa Stepf, Lea Whitcher & Sonata (research and performance), Sophia Stepf (director), Andi Otto and Florian Hacke (music), Philippe Werhahn from Ting Ding (costume design), Marie Winnie Wilka (assistant director), Susana Alonso (technical director), ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro (production management)

Supported by Governing Mayor of Berlin - Senate Chancellery - Cultural Affairs, Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V., Hessian Ministry of Art and Science, Cultural Office of the City of Kassel, Gerhard-Fieseler-Foundation. Research trip supported by Goethe-Institute Dhaka. School shows supported by Well-Being-Foundation and Cultural Department of the City of Kassel.

Events

Sophiensæle Berlin: May 21 - 23, 2015 / Kulturhaus Dock 4 Kassel: May 28 - 30, 2015 / Schlachthaus Theater Bern: October 21 - 24, 2015 / Theater Tuchlaube Aarau: October 28 - 31, 2015 / Staatstheater Kassel: November 4 - 6, 2015 / Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden: February 2, 2016

Press

The dilemma is as complex as the production is intelligent. It doesn't deal with the subject without considering the performance situation and the role of those involved. And yet the play doesn't just spread gallows humor. “Songs of the T-Shirt” is also about the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in 2013. It is also about art and its self-centeredness. But this theater points beyond itself: at the end, the audience can purchase T-shirts from a young Berlin label. Sewn by workers in Bangladesh, who also own their factory.

Der Bund

They portray very different views and perspectives on the subject, and as soon as you find yourself in one of them, there is a break and the next image. It is thanks to the terrific direction (Sophia Stepf) and the acting (Lisa Stepf, Lea Whitcher, Sonata), but above all to this apparently very long research work, that it works so well.

Der Freitag

The small production is so well done that the playfully presented facts really stick in the memory. And it is deeply moving to see how women buried under the rubble of the collapsed Rana Plaza building had their legs and arms cut off or had them cut off to get free.

RBB online

With Brecht in mind, the viewer has to ask himself how to proceed the next time he buys a T-shirt. H&M would have a “Conscious Collection”, but how much pure conscience is really behind it? Would it be better to buy from a young designer in Neukölln, in the “Sweatshop in Reuterstraße”? Or should you consciously choose “Made in Bangladesh” because boycotting doesn't help anyone? Often, as the evening also teaches us, our Western logic falls short. 

Nachtkritik