Abattoir Fermé &

Staatstheater

Kassel

Sarah Bernhardt slept there in a custom-made coffin, Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey there and Valerie Solanas penned her manifesto there before shooting Andy Warhol. Quentin Crisp was a lifelong resident there and William Burroughs worked on the delirious Naked Lunch. Patti Smith, Nico, Leonard Cohen and Marianne Faithfull rehearsed there and Dylan Thomas breathed his last there.

Abattoir Fermé's latest show takes inspiration from New York's famous Chelsea Hotel and its occupants.

In the 1960s, the hotel was in very bad shape: filthy, grimy and plagued by fire, cockroaches, graffiti, theft and celebrity deaths. Despite - or just because of - that squalor, the hotel was a draw for artists of all kinds. It was the place to be for artists around Andy Warhol's Factory and for celebrities such as Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, Sid Vicious, Bette Davis, Mark Rothko and many, many others.

Hotel Chelsea is not a historical or documentary reconstruction, but a musical performance about highs and lows, with live music and a mixed Flemish-German cast. After Die Verwandlung (2022) and Die Physiker (2023), Hotel Chelsea is already the third collaboration between Abattoir Fermé and the German Staatstheater Kassel, but the first to be seen in Belgium. Exclusively at kunstencentrum nona!