Ugly Duckling

Venue: Kammer - “I never dreamt of being so lucky when I was still the ugly little duckling.”

In Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, you always come across transformations: The Little Mermaid transforms into a human, the ugly duckling into a proud swan. The fact that these transformations are also a masked game with gender and sexuality is the starting point for a project that juxtaposes Andersen's fairy tale with the biographies of Berlin drag queens. These protagonists of urban nightlife make playing with gender roles a liberating spectacle. In doing so, they move on the dazzling line between shameless self-expression and subcultural sense of mission. In fact, transformation through makeup and wigs not only produces a new ego, but also a new self-confidence. The artistic figure created in this way is the proud swan, in whose form the ugly duckling of the world can imagine himself.

Bastian Kraft was awarded the Ehrenstöckel by Travestie für Deutschland in 2019 for his production Ugly Duckling.