Handle with Care

„When you’re sad, lonely or completely overwhelmed, then grandma, dad, your best friend or your neighbour steps in to make you a hearty soup. Together, you savour its warmth as you start to put the world to rights... If only! Most of us live far away from this fictional grandma or family, don’t even know the name of the supposedly friendly neighbour, and the best friend has their own shit to deal with.“ – Gob Squad

In a world which puts capital over care, the German-British collective Gob Squad decided to get to know the neighbourhood. Together with local guests, Gob Squad takes over Residenz to cook, talk, eat and sing together – and to ask under what circumstances people can come together. “Handle with Care” is in search of new communities and new approaches towards a better world.

Instead of fleeting encounters, Gob Squad is focusing on developing longer-term relationships and sharing authorship with our guest collaborators. The project focuses on questions of participation, empathy and responsibility: who owns what and why? Who listens to whom and who is not heard? Who cares about what, and who cares about whom? What form does that care take? And why does this work so often take place in secret?
Gob Squad opens the doors of the theatre and look for ways to transcend barriers of language, class, age, culture and other demographics: What can be done here together? “Handle with Care” tries to think of cultural participation, entertainment and experimental theatre together and create a situation that connects instead of dividing people. Ideally, a community grows that expands over the course of the evening to such an extent that guests and hosts can no longer be distinguished from one another. Everyone helps out.


Gob Squad are a British-German collective from Berlin who have been working together on live performances between theater, art and media since 1994. In search of beauty and relevance in the everyday, they place their works both in theaters and in the midst of urban life. Utopian scenarios meet the reality of a concrete situation, the outcome of which is often uncertain. By creating alternative meeting spaces and formats, Gob Squad have been contributing to breaking down interpersonal barriers since their beginnings. Gob Squad most recently co-produced "1984 - Back to No Future" with the Residence.


www.gobsquad.com