A Stage Design Concept for an Imagined Theatre Play on Berlin’s Housing Crisis & the subsequent shared-living horror stories.

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The stage design for Unheimliches Heim examines the tension between public and private spheres within the context of Berlin’s housing crisis. The title itself plays with the Freudian/Lippi concept of the “unheimlich”, the uncanny and the “Heim,” or home. What should be intimate and secure becomes estranged, threatening, and permeable. Through an expandable and contractible room structure, the scenography materializes the psychological and social pressures of shared-living situations in contemporary Berlin.

The imagined play was based on Emile Coccia´s The Philosophy of Home (2020).

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The prominence of the underground system in the play's stage design is not incidental.
In Berlin, the warmth and constancy of the U-Bahn often function as a temporary alternative to home.

One intentionally misses a stop to postpone returning to an uncomfortable flat. One finishes applying make-up during the commute. Homeless individuals use the train network as shelter. The underground becomes a shared, transient living room, almost as a response to the absence of living rooms in Berlin apartments.

The underground is saturated with intimate acts: private phone calls, whispered confessions, moments of exhaustion or emotional breakdown. The supposedly public space accommodates intensely private acts. In contrast, the shared flat, which is supposed to offer privacy, is saturated with exposure, courtesy of intrusive roommates.