Bop House (working title)

Moon and Sun, the feature films by Kurdish-Austrian filmmaker, screenwriter and performance artist Kurdwin Ayub, focus on broken families, the Western gaze on Muslim life, on young women and patriarchy. The storytelling is so close to our current reality that at times the films almost seem like documentaries. At the same time, the chances and constraints of the internet and social media play an important role in her work. In her early video pieces — shorts in the style of YouTube clips – Ayub performs directly to camera in seemingly private settings, dauntlessly playing with expectations, social roles and gender stereotypes. Her new production at the Volksbühne is set in a shared house inhabited by content creators. Inspired by a real-life Bop House, it is about a group of influencers settled there to produce content for the erotic social-media platform OnlyFans. “Bop” is a slang term generally used in a derogatory way for people – especially women – who have multiple sex partners. The women of the Bop House have reclaimed this insult as a form of empowerment. And, naturally, they use it as a form of provocation – and to make money.

In her second work for the stage, Ayub sets out to explore group dynamics, the performative quality of social media, and how reality and self-staging tend to get blurred in ways that are uncomfortable for everyone involved.