The starting point of Complex of Tensions, which will be Jasco Viefhue’s theatre debut as a director, is made up of interviews with queer Black men living in Berlin. It is their stories, their experiences and their resistance that form the groundwork for this piece.

The orders of sex and skin colour, of gender and race are social constructs. Black masculinity is a social product, an „extreme“ through which society forms its hierarchy and norms. And yet there is a full reactionary force working to maintain the historical and hallucinatory hierarchies of privilege and exploitation – times are brutal. And so, there is a lack of positive images, of role models. Complex of Tensions is the artistic reflection and performative development of self-determined Black masculinities, an urgent intervention.