Listen up! Is someone talking here, or is it sing-song time again? Who calls the shots around here? Who says what’s what? Why are we who we are? Which heroic figures make an impression on us? And where does the power lie in an opera house? With the director? The writer? The conductor? All of the above? Is the score more important than the lyrics? Who chooses the costumes? Who decides on the hair? Is an opera house a machine of many human parts? Wherever artistic forces are at work, a power structure of sorts is to be found. And while the artistic issues are constantly being addressed and re-addressed, the systemic power relations seem to remain the same.

In THE MAKING OF BLOND dramatists and media professionals at Chez Company team up with members of the ensembles of the Deutsche Oper Berlin to explore and question traditional roles and images of heroes and heroines in opera, comparing them to their own experiences in real life. This raises the question of how a character/role feeds into the construction of identities today, how it reflects a power structure and what it tells us about relations between the sexes – on, off and backstage.

THE MAKING OF BLOND is the second part of a joint project by Chez Company, the Wiener Burgtheater and the Deutsche Oper Berlin. The first instalment, a theatre installation entitled THE BLOND PROJECT, was a partnership between the Wiener Burgtheater and Caroline Peters. This process is now being continued at the Deutsche Oper Berlin as a collaboration between writer/director Gesine Danckwart, set designer Julia Hansen, experimental radio-playwright Fabian Kühlein, dramatic advisor Sabrina Zwach, composer duo Thomas Kürstner and Sebastian Vogel, ensemble members Burkhard Ulrich and Jörg Schörner and musicians of the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.