Handle With Care

A Gob Squad (Germany) production / Gob Squad and the neighbours of Mehringplatz

When you're sad, lonely or completely overwhelmed, your grandmother, father, best friend or neighbour comes to make you a delicious soup. Together, you savour its warmth as you start to set the world right… If only it were that simple! Most of us live far from such a grandmother or found family, we don't even know the name of our supposedly friendly neighbour, and our best friend has their own problems to deal with. In a world that puts capital above care, Gob Squad, together with HAU to connect, set out to get to know the neighbourhood. They've been guests at Mehringplatz countless times and were warmly welcomed. Now it's time to return that hospitality. Together with the neighbours, Gob Squad takes over HAU1 to cook, talk, eat and sing together - and to ask under what circumstances we can come together. "Handle With Care" is a search for new communities and new approaches toward a better world.

The screening will be preceded by a short introduction to the company and followed by a discussion with the audience and a member of the artistic team (joining online).

Together with: the Clinic of Broken Things and participants from KiezKochen (Alessia del Vigo, Miriam D., Mo Mara Hundt, Jacqueline Koch, Renate Kutscher, Kenan Oymak, Reinhild Religion and Katarina Stricevic)

Special thanks to all the partners in Mehringplatz: Abdulkader Asli & choir, Begegnungsstätte Mehring-Kiez, Café MadaMe, Mizza Caric, F1 Stadtteilzentrum, Richard Herbst, the "Kiezkrähen", Kreuzberger Musikalische Aktion e.V., Merle Brüser (Gewobag), Outreach Berlin, the Stadtteilmütter of Mehringplatz, TubeZ, Urbane Praxis e.V., Quartiersmanagement Mehringplatz, Beate Zeiss, Emine Zwanzig; and Rhiannon White of the British artists & collective Common Wealth for the advice and professional support they have constantly offered us on every aspect of developing the "Handle with Care" project; as well as Stella Konstantinou and the team at HAU to connect, HAU's community engagement programme, whose experience we draw on.

Co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Schauspiel Leipzig and HELLERAU - Europäisches Zentrum der Künste Dresden.

Supported by the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt and Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Gob Squad receives regular funding from the federal state of Berlin (2024-2027), Chancellery of the Berlin Senate for Culture and Europe.