How to Make a Life
With the festival “How to Make a Life” this coming autumn 2026, the Frankfurt Mousonturm aims to address a pressing, socially relevant and often suppressed topic – age(ing). The programme focuses on the underrepresentation of aging bodies and voices in theatre and questions conventional views of youth, performance and availability. Co-curated by the South African choreographer Boyzie Cekwana, the event includes international perspectives on demographic change. The festival will feature world and national premieres, as well as guest performances from the fields of dance, performance, theatre, participative works and cross-genre formats.
The Chinese artist Wen Hui (65), for example, is developing a dance piece with women over 60 that imagines the body as an archive. Together the performers explore sources of strength from migration backgrounds, crises, awakenings and physical changes. The Australian artist Samara Hersch will present her 1:1 online performance “Sex and Death on the Internet” in Germany for the first time. The Lebanese artist Danya Hammoud will develop a site-specific performance with people between the ages of 14 and 100 who confront and reconsider images of belonging. The installation “The Lesser Told Story” by Boyzie Cekwana gathers a multitude of perspectives on art, life and age(ing), read aloud by various artists, e.g. Tim Etchels, Deborah Hay and Wen Hui.
The programme will be supplemented by an open, intergenerational kitchen, conceived and headed by the Frankfurt theatre collective andpartnersincrime and YRDWorks. As a venue devoted to personal encounter, the kitchen will serve as a place for new perspectives, empathy and social bonding in response to a complex theme that already or will eventually impact us all at some point.
Artistic direction: Boyzie Cekwana, Alexandra Hennig, Anna Wagner
Artists: Deborah Hay, Wen Hui, Faustin Linyekula, Eszter Salamon, Danya Hammoud, andpartnersincrime, Tim Etchells, Samara Hersch, Theater Artemis, Phia Ménard
Dates
17 September 2026 – 3 October 2026: Festival
Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm | Frankfurt am Main