'Here all is distance; 
There it was breath'

Operators looks to pervert the roles of female telephone operators active throughout Europe and North America from the late 1800 to 1970ʼs. Staged on an elevated square stage, the performers transform their bodies through vocal experiments, texts and movements to become a channel for mostly hidden and obscure historical voices and traces.The work takes its cue from the mechanized, feminized voices of comfort, control and direction that continue to play a massive role in choreographing the private and public today, from the dulcet tones of necro-capitalism to the weather forecast. These voices without bodies and the spit filled mouths that generate them. Who do these distant, garbled voices on the other end line belong to? Who maintains these split subjectivities? What is the significance of that wavery unstable hum that bears an alarming resemblance to heavy breathing? Szecsödyʼs work functions as a subterranean switchboard, connecting women and their disembodied voices across time and space. “Operators” probes the human aspects of these disembodied voices, working backwards to propose mutant hosts. 

Concept, text, direction: Amina Szecsödy
Performance: Amina Szecsödy, Gry Tingskog, Katja Cheraneva
Dramaturgy: Anneliese Ostertag
Artistic advice: Lena Appel
Costume: Laura Stellaci
Music: Maya Lourenço
Light: Gry Tingskog
Technical assistance: Eoghan Ryan
Documentation: John Hussain Flindt

Co-produced with Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. 

Supported by: Hessian Theatre Academy, Fonds Darstellende Künste within the program NEUSTART KULTUR #takeheart and Kulturamt Frankfurt am Main