RATHAUS

A performance by Freja Hallberg

A grotesque office. A deadly decision. Two acts about what we execute, what we permit – and what we become.

RATHAUS is a brutal, musically driven performance about bureaucracy, complicity and systemic violence. Absurd and unsettlingly bureaucratic, it examines the link between everyday systems and structural cruelty – not through explanation, but experience.

In Act I, a group of clerks at a glassy government agency carry out daily tasks: emails, spreadsheets, digital meetings. Slowly, unease creeps in. This is not an ordinary office – this is the Authority for Population Reduction. What begins as comedy becomes disturbing.

Act II ruptures everything. The office disappears. The same clerks reappear – but now, in unbearable proximity to what they do. There is no distance. No illusion. Only presence, bodies, breath – and the unbearable fact of execution.

Driven by a live musical score composed by Anton Alfvén, RATHAUS is a rhythmic, political and affective work designed for international touring.

Performed in German with English subtitles.