About the work
Die Insel der Perversen is a German Singspiel created by filmmaker, writer and activist Rosa von Praunheim for Deutsches Theater Berlin. It received its world premiere in the theatre's Kammer on 4 December 2024 and completes a trilogy of theatre works by von Praunheim at the DT. The production combines spoken theatre, songs, political satire and elements of musical revue.
Plot
The piece looks towards an imagined near future. Von Praunheim and his collaborators construct a grotesque political world in which social prejudice, queer identities, reactionary politics and resistance collide in deliberately caricatured form. Rather than following the conventions of realistic drama, the work develops through satirical situations, exaggerated figures and musical episodes. Its underlying question is whether the future must inevitably become darker or whether anarchic humour, solidarity and queer vitality can still offer a counterforce.
Cultural significance
The work extends von Praunheim's decades-long combination of artistic practice, queer emancipation and political provocation into contemporary theatre. Deutsches Theater describes it as the completion of his trilogy for the house. Critical responses have emphasised its form as an aggressively comic political farce and its deliberately anarchic response to present-day ideological and cultural conflicts.