Studio Schramm is a working artist’s studio in the middle of Neukölln, a 4-minute walk from U-Bahn Rathaus Neukölln. It’s a carpeted room with large cushions and curtains, warm and a little apart from the city outside. We play on the floor here. Roman Schramm, a visual artist, runs the studio.
Most of what happens here is the weekly Roleplay Lab, an evening for working with feelings through play. When did you last play someone who wasn’t you? Here’s an example: you invent a character who is very happy, and you play them. Another person just says: “Tell me more, tell me everything.” With that support you can stay in the feeling, and you start to feel it yourself. You play someone else for a moment, and the feeling runs through you anyway. A feeling can come, move through you and go, and you don’t have to explain it or hold on to it. You can do the same with being sad, being in love or being angry. It can be freeing to be playful with yourself and with others, without having to deliver anything.
Who you play is up to you. We begin with a warm-up, then work in short exercises, each part four minutes at most. They show what roleplay can do, something we all knew how to do as children and mostly stopped doing.
Think of an improvisational dance workshop, only with roleplay: you’re led one step at a time, and at some point you realize you’re really playing someone. At the end we take time to come back, and many people leave feeling connected to the others and really playful.
There’s no audience. You don’t have to share anything personal, and you can step out whenever you want. It’s a group of 6 to 10 people, and you’ll talk quite a lot, in English. It’s not therapy. There’s no physical contact, unless someone says it out loud and the whole group talks it through and agrees.
Besides the Lab, the studio hosts longer roleplays, each with its own theme. You can find them on roleplay.romanschramm.com.
