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  • K-hole Karaoke | Ping-Hsiang Wang
  • September 10th - 13th 2025
  • TATWERK | Berlin
Frozen in a beam of light, Ping-Hsiang Wang contorts in a moment of raw tension—caught between personal memory and the looming shadow of war.
© Elzo Bonam

Why is a Taiwanese military reservist so fascinated by Alicia Keys’ chart-topping hit Girl on Fire – a gay anthem he has sung countless times in karaoke bars? As he launches into the song’s climax, he is struck by a disorienting realization: He can no longer place himself in the timeline of his own life when this transformative song was released on September 4, 2012.
A fanatical search through his digital archives unearths fragments of memory and confronts him with a past haunted by violence and destruction. In a live performance that assembles a visual monument entirely from memory, Wang wrestles with the fragility of memory – and the unsettling reality that everything he has preserved could go up in flames in an instant, consumed by forces beyond his control.

Retina Maneuver is co-produced by TATWERK | Performative Forschung (Berlin), Freies Werkstatt Theater (Cologne), and Kaaitheater (Brussels).
The production is supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, as well as the National Culture and Arts Foundation Taiwan. 
Additional support comes from the residency program at PACT Zollverein (Essen), funded by the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The project also receives backing from Mestizo Arts Platform, English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center, and the 2022 Thinkers’ Partner Project (TP Project), organized by Thinkers’ Studio.

Dates

Premiere: September 10th 2025 | 8 pm
Further shows: September 11th - 13th 2025 | 8 pm

Tickets:
15€ regular | 10€ reduced
20€ supporter | 25€ unicorn
in our Ticketshop

Questions about ticketing & special needs: tickets@tatwerk-berlin.de

An artist talk with producer and researcher Karen Ka Wan Cheung will follow the show on Septemberth 12 at 9 pm in the frame of the Theaterscoutings Program.

Tour dates:

March 14th 2026 | 8 p.m.
March 15th2026 | 6 p.m.
Freies Werkstatt Theater Köln
in the frame of Tipping Points

Work-in progess showings:

June 8th 2025
Fringify Hamburg

February 25th 2025
C.O. Nova, Antwerp (BE)

February 21st and 22nd 2025
KVS Box, Brussels (BE)
presented by both KVS and Kaaitheater

December 6th 2024 
RIGHTABOUTNOW FESTIVAL 2024

March 8th 2024
Monty, Antwerpen (BE)

February 19th 2024
Expo Festival: A Showcase of Wahlberliner*innen
English Theatre, Berlin (DE)

October 20th 2023
WIPCOOP
KVS Box, Brussels (BE)
Further information 

October 6th 2023
TATWERK | Berlin

Credits

Artistic Creation & Performance: K-hole Karaoke | Wang Ping-Hsiang
Dramaturgy: Wan Shi
Lighting Design: Raquel Rosildete
Artistic Producer: Aurora Kellermann
Assistant Director: Chang Kang-Hua
Graphic Design: Hsieh Meng-Jiin

Biography

You can’t spell karaoke without the “K.” In K-hole Karaoke, that “K” stands for Kunst (art, in German), the Kardashians (a pop-cultural force and lens through which we examine fame, capitalism, race, and digital spectacle), and the K-hole—a state of cultural dissociation induced by an overdose of all of the above.
Founded by Taiwanese director Ping-Hsiang Wang and American writer Travis Jeppesen, K-hole Karaoke is a performance company exploring how human behavior is reshaped by systems—material, digital, environmental, and commercial. Their work interrogates the ways in which our perceptions, desires, and actions are conditioned by the mechanics of late capitalism and mediated experience.
Their signature aesthetic transforms the everyday into the uncanny—transposing familiar landscapes into hyperreal, often surreal digital environments. Theater, for them, is not just a stage but a perceptual technology—an apparatus for decoding reality and proposing new modes of communication.
Fusing language, movement, sound, livestreams, objects, and scenography, K-hole Karaoke constructs performances where narrative becomes a fully immersive, sensory architecture. Each work invites audiences to step into a world where meaning is layered, unstable, and constantly remade.
www.kholekaraoke.com