Bodies in love, in decay, under observation or on view: the three world premieres at this NEW SCENES VI – EXPOSED event have in common the relentless self-questioning of the protagonists, their self-centredness and loneliness as they at once exploit their bodies mercilessly yet sense their estrangement from them. We form part of the world through and with our bodies – yet it is a fundamental reality of the modern age that we have come to view them as an object that we handle and manhandle as if hived off from our very self.

In NEUE SZENEN VI - EXPOSED, this is the unifying element for three plays in which young artists explore these questions on stage from their own perspectives and life experiences. In Juta Pranulytė’s PHYSICAL EDUCATION, based on interviews and written in collaboration with dramaturg Giulia Fornasier, private individuals describe how they perceive themselves as people. They reveal their vulnerability, exposing themselves to the regards and rating of others. LÒVELEASE by composer Germán Alonso and librettist Fabrizio Funari is likewise about personal disclosures somewhere between mendacity and the quest for intimacy within the setting of a dystopic dating agency. D:\FACED by Sina Fani Sani, composed to a libretto by Franziska vom Heede, pursues our obsession with the body further, contriving to write it into a power system that claims to be saving mankind from a looming apocalypse.

All three works were created as part of the sixth edition of NEW SCENES, a biennial project run jointly by the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. The project sees itself as a laboratory in which young artists can search for their own signatures in the multifaceted musical-theatre metier while experimenting with new forms of artistic collaboration. NEW SCENES always begins with a composition competition, which this year was also open to composer/librettist teams and whose international profile was resoundingly evinced by the 120 entries from over 30 countries. The respective winners are commissioned to produce a piece of musical theatre, not longer than 30 minutes in duration, to be developed with the close involvement of students from the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin and later staged, performed and sung by students in the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. The biennial series is an opportunity for students, mentored by the Deutsche Oper Berlin in a professional setting, to gather experience while producing fresh, modern-day musical theatre.