Kidnapped – A Prologue

We are all trapped in our neoliberal ‘freedom’. Ideologies, identities, technologies, political systems, predatory relationships, competition, capital, and structural inequalities: these are our hostage-takers.  

In the form of a variety theatre, Rodrigo Batista & Marianna Senne want to shake us awake from our contemporary hypnosis. Their work in progress throws fragments of our political current events – in the form of theatre, video, music, propaganda and tragedy – into a blender. They collect all these issues and challenges onto one mixtape: an emotionally layered compilation in which scenes, tracks, and themes take us along with them.  

Can theatre be a wake-up call for our collective Stockholm syndrome? How do we awaken from a deeply rooted colonial and capitalist subconscious?  

• Rodrigo Batista is a Brazilian theatre director, actor, and teacher who lives and works in the Netherlands and Belgium. His research covers a broad spectrum of philosophy, politics, film, and dance; in his practice, the importance of political statements, direct and explicit messages aimed at world politics, is paramount – or rather: Rodrigo wants to radically translate the ‘here’ and ‘now’ into theatre.  
• Mariana Senne (São Paulo, Brazil) is a theatre maker and performer from Berlin. Her current work revolves around intercultural theatre practices, in which she put new forms of staging front and centre, with a focus on feminism. She has collaborated with Claudia Bosse/Theater Combinat, Joachim Robbrecht & De Warme Winkel Groupe, Karin Beier, and since 2022 with Rodrigo Battista. Together they have renewed their methods of creation, similarly to their collective theatre-making in São Paulo,