Songs for the final round

At the end of a long evening, they may well feel just as they do at the close of a wonderful season: gloomy thoughts and a sense of melancholy at the approaching farewell.

A good reason to spend the finale of UTOPIE 3 with three proven experts in the collective distillation of the moment. Radical and hesitant, twisted and intoxicating is the programme that Christian Filips, Franz Tröger and Monika Rinck – a trio that blends the worlds of theatre, music and literature in a disenchanting way – have been keeping in store for such occasions for more than ten years: As the end draws near, it therefore helps to strike up a song for the final round, which can be delayed a little with this last song – exuberantly, considerately and with confidence in the next morning.

Sing along, raise a glass or simply be there, but in any case, please feel warmly invited to celebrate a utopian finale with us, over soup and chanson.

Monika Rinck has been publishing poems, essays and translations with various publishers since 1998. Her latest collection of poems, *HÖLLENFAHRT & ENTENSTAAT*, was published by kookbooks in 2024. For her literary work, Monika Rinck received the Kleist Prize in 2015, the Ernst Jandl Prize in 2017, the Roswitha Prize in 2019, the Berlin Literature Prize and the Erlangen Literature Prize for Poetry in Translation (together with Orsolya Kalász) in 2021, and the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize from the City of Bad Homburg in 2022. She is a member of the P.E.N. Club, the Lyrikknappschaft Schöneberg, the Berlin Academy of Arts and the German Academy for Language and Literature. Since 2023, Monika Rinck has been Professor of Creative Writing at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

Christian Filips is a poet, director, music dramaturg and translator. His literary works, for which he has been awarded the Mondseer Poetry Prize 2025, among other honours, are published by Engeler Verlage / Switzerland. Most recently, in 2023, *Im Traum die Auskunft sagt: Hier!* (In a Dream, the Answer Says: Here!), a selection of poems from 1996–2023. His productions have been staged at venues including the Volksbühne, the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and the Berliner Ensemble. Since 2006, Filips has been responsible for the programmes of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin and has been working increasingly with choirs. He has taught at the University of Hildesheim and the Inter-University Centre for Dance in Berlin, and since 2025 has been a lecturer in versification and diction at the Academy of Dramatic Arts Ernst Busch.

Franz Tröger is a musician who works in theatre, museums and literature. He composes music and performs on stage himself, where he also enjoys saying a few words. He has worked at venues including the Theater am Neumarkt in Zurich, the Stadttheater Aachen, the Stadttheater Basel, the E.T.A. Hoffmann Theatre in Bamberg and the Theater Heilbronn.)

This event is part of the supporting programme.
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