Adapted by Helene Hegemann and River Roux from | *The Assembly of Women* by Aristophanes | World Premiere
“Everything will be common property in the future, and everything will belong to everyone; one person will not own many acres of land, and another will not have even a small plot for a grave.”
Praxagora in *The Assembly of Women*
In Aristophanes’ comedy, politics in ancient Athens is so marked by mismanagement, constant wars, and corruption that the women devise a plan: disguised as men, they take over the Assembly, which makes decisions on finances, laws, foreign policy, and war. Was Aristophanes advocating a radical way of thinking—did he even call for political participation and equality? Or was the whole thing just a joke at the expense of women, whose—inevitably failing—attempt at self-empowerment simply served to mock any utopia that even questioned the multifaceted bondage of an elitist male-dominated regime?
*Red Zone* transports women weary of the concentration of power in the ruling class into a gym that markets self-optimization through grueling, sweat-inducing drills as a party, while beats timed to the second evoke war drums, and the tempo of successive tracks creates an atmosphere that claims excessive progress. It shares with the protagonists of the original play the absence of a social vision for a better future. And whether power is better placed in the hands of women than in those of men remains an open question. It is more likely that a battle of the sexes will not abolish the unequal distribution of power and capital. United, however, that very goal could be achieved.
In 2008, Helene Hegemann’s first film, *Torpedo*, was awarded the Max Ophüls Prize; in 2010, she made her debut as an author with the novel *Axolotl Roadkill*, which has been translated into 20 languages and which she adapted into a film herself. In 2017, the film received the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival. This was followed by directing work for opera and theater, as well as numerous journalistic and literary works, including the novels *Jage zwei Tiger*, *Bungalow*, and *Striker*, and two nominations for the German Book Prize. She also presented *Subotnik* at the Munich Film Festival in 2022 and *Deine Brüder* in the Panorama section at the Berlinale in 2024.
Performer and author River Roux studied photography at the University of Brighton in England, was part of the Berlin Strippers Collective from 2021 to 2023, and made her theater debut in *Merry Stripmas* (It Only Takes One) at Berlin’s Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and in Lola Arias’ *Happy Nights* at Theater Bremen. Her work explores the connections between exploitation, gender, care, and sexuality, as well as queer militancy and self-defense.
She staged her very first solo piece, *JUICE* ( 2024)—also at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz—with thedirector Bibiana Mendes, who worked as an assistant director (Münchner Kammerspiele, Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin) with Ersan Mondtag, among others; worked as a dramaturg (Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, Theater Bremen) for Lola Arias; and directed *Der Russe ist einer der Birken liebt* by Olga Grjasnowa and *Auerhaus* by Bov Bjerg at Theater Augsburg.
