So Many Ideas is a performance that explores a moral crisis we cannot quite name: a silent, self-destructive malaise, an obscure calamity.

Set in a crumbling portside hotel room at the edge of their civilization, three women—one terminally ill—take refuge in their shared space. One plays the violin almost absentmindedly, another sings, while the other murmurs, dreams, pleads and remembers. Together, their words overlap, complete, and challenge one another like a Baroque cadenza—a reflection of culture, a nervous tic, an urgent search for meaning: how they got there; how we all got here.

Drawing inspiration from Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, Wallace Shawn’s The Fever, and musically from Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto, So Many Ideas confronts the present moment: in a world overflowing with brilliance, beauty, and invention—so many choices, so much creativity—why do we keep ending up in the same places, with so little to show for it?

70 minutes, sung and spoken in English, German and Italian, partially subtitled in German and English

Additional information

Glen T. Sheppard was born in Canada and studied acting at the Ryerson Theatre School. He works in performance and film with a focus on music and has been a stage director and revival director at the English National Opera as well as other opera houses. Sheppard engages with musical texts, rituals, and the awareness of time, from which psychological choreographies emerge. Recently, he staged Rusalka in real time over the course of a night, titled Until the Waters Foam Up, and I Furiosi at Uferstudios, an adaptation of three Handel operas.

Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community

Participating artists

Marie-Gabrielle Arco (Performance)

Miako Klein (Performance)

Fritz Polzer (Video)

Glen Sheppard (Idee)

Barbara Sotelsek (Performance)