“If you're thinking about being my baby, it don’t matter if you're black or white,” as the hit song goes by the King of Pop. In 1991, the record company described it as being a “rock ‘n’ roll dance song about racial harmony.” Can pop music provide the reputed potential to overcome structurally established power structures, to allow us to temporarily become someone else, to discard the identities assigned to us and escape the logic of representation? The choreographer and dancer Joana Tischkau exposes the white (German) desire for black impersonation and takes the viewer on a journey into the conceptions, memories and projections of Afro-American and Afro-German cultural production. “PLAYBLACK” moves away from universalism (of white abstraction) and invites the audience to pause for a moment in the specificity of black German experience. The diligent construction of white neutrality and generality is called into question. It's Showtime Baby! “PLAYBLACK” utilizes the ‘90s television format “Mini Playback Show”, hosted by Mareijke Amado, making an attempt to counter the call for liberal “colorblindness” with childlike defiance. “PLAYBLACK” is Tischkau’s final production at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies at the University of Giessen.

Concept, choreography: Clara Reiner, Joana Tischkau
Sound direction: Jan Gehmlich
Dramaturgy: Elisabeth Hampe
Performance: Annedore Antrie, Clara Reiner, Joana Tischkau
Costume: Ina Trenk
Print: Nadine Bakota
Lighting design: Dennis Dieter Kopp
Graphic, stage design: Justus Gelberg
Production manager: Lisa Gehring

Production: Joana Tischkau
Cooperation: Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main, Studiengang Choreografie und Performance der Hessischen Theaterakademie
Support: Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main

Special thanks to: Bojana Kunst, Vanessa Thompson, Heiner Goebbels, Elisa Liepsch, Aran Kleebauer, Daniel Shaw