The Studio 66 project sees a collection of solo artists and collectives invited by Neuköllner Oper to workshop and present 11-minute miniature performances. The artists, who will appear in various productions during the 2025/26 season, developed these short-form performances under the artistic leadership of The Centre for the Less Good Idea’s co-founder and director, Bronwyn Lace.

These pieces offer insight into their artistic approaches – and a preview of what’s to come in the upcoming season.

The selected artists are: Scottish composer and performer Genevieve Murphy; the Dutch performance collective Club Gewalt; Berlin-based performer and singer Anthony Hüseyin; performer and musician Mara Snip; Stage director and Performer Cora Frost; theatre and jazz musician Paul‑Jakob Dinkelacker; jazz pianist and improvisational musician Niko Meinhold, and South African composer, choreographer, performer, and long-time collaborator of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Nhlanhla Mahlangu.

“Over the years, The Centre for the Less Good Idea has developed and embraced a way of working that honours both the short form and the act of collaborative making.

We believe that everyone in the room is a valid collaborator and shaper of the work. It is through this collective way of seeing and by opening up a safe space for failure that the first ideas, those good ideas with all of their complications and limitations, can emerge and be shaped into less good ideas.

The 11-minute epic, a performance that holds all of the activity, emotion, humour, triumph, and tragedy of the theatrical epic in the short form, has become a useful format through which to test new ideas. 

In the case of Studio 66, where artists are meeting for the first time, it will allow for a way of working that is spontaneous, collaborative, and uniquely generative.” – Bronwyn Lace, Co-founder & Director, The Centre for the Less Good Idea