by Jesse Slater // Apr. 10, 2026
From the back of a rehearsal studio a couple weeks before ‘Roses Rising – The Dinner’ premieres at HAU, I watch as one of Leila Hekmat’s cast languishes on a chaise longue centred on the studio’s impromptu stage. Eyes glazed, gazing vacantly at the ceiling, she philosophizes: “who am I?”
The scene feels full of both melodrama and parody, a tone that runs through Hekmat’s recent work. Her debut theatrical project ‘Gloriette,’ a baroque-inflected musical comedy staged at HAU in 2024, followed a petulant ensemble of employees and customers inhabiting a glitzy department store that is slowly sinking into the Venetian lagoon. Prior to her theatrical work, Hekmat’s performances, video works and installations followed a similar suit; tracing the spooky, comedic strangeness of our psyches at their most unmoored.
This time, Hekmat turns to the images and contradictions of 1970s protest culture, probing at various sincere and self-mythologizing drives of revolutionary fantasy. The first iteration, ‘Roses Rising – The Movement,’ was presented earlier this year in the atrium of Gropius Bau. Performers in flowing white garments, ribbons and flowers in their hair issued open-ended calls to action—“free yourself!” ‘The Dinner’ promises to shift the focus inwards, staging a more intimate, self-interrogating counterpart.
After rehearsals, we find a quiet spot in the studio courtyard to discuss lesbian micro-communities, cynicism and the search for belonging within corrupt systems that takes form in Hekmat’s work.
Leila Hekmat: ‘Roses Rising – The Movement,’ performance at Gropius Bau, 2026 // © Gropius Bau, photo by Amely Sommer
Jesse Slater: Could you say a little about the title ‘Roses Rising’ and how it came about?
Leila Hekmat: The title was spontaneous, impulsive. It was inspired by Kenneth Anger. He has two films with ‘Rising’ in the title—‘Lucifer Rising’ and ‘Scorpio Rising’—and I wanted to make something in this supernatural, surreal, occultist, exaggerated, fantasy world, like his films.
JS: What about the roses in the title?
LH: The roses are part of a flower allegory that finds itself in all these texts and lyrics. I think of them as representing some kind of awakening or renewal: the flowers and the daisies and the hippies and the roses. Roses feel more sinister.
Leila Hekmat: ‘Roses Rising,’ 2025 // Courtesy of Leila Hekmat and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi
JS: You mention hippies. What drew you to 1970s protest culture, the context for ‘Roses Rising?’
LH: It’s not one thing. I really, really love the late 1960s and the early 70s. One of my favorite movie musicals (or just musicals, period) is ‘Hair.’ So I wanted to create a campy, satirical musical inspired by it.
Then, when I was doing this other project a few years ago, ‘Female Remedy,’ I started digging into a lot of feminist magazines from the 1960s and 70s. I found this trove of lesbian magazines and gay liberation magazines. All these different movements stayed in my visual memory. From there, I started making images, picking drawings and sketches and phrases from the texts. I drew a lot from those magazines.
I was also drawn to this desire to create micro-communities. It’s really romantic and attractive to me that back in that time, someone in a small town would intentionally order this little zine from this micro-community of lesbian activists or hippie activists. They would look forward to receiving that magazine, that porthole into a world. And then, they were part of that world.
Leila Hekmat: ‘Female Remedy,’ film still, 2022 // Courtesy the artist
JS: In your recent Gropius Bau studio visit, you speak about growing up in LA and feeling like a bit of a goth, like a cynical, grumpy person. What role do you feel cynicism plays in your work?
LH: I’m not a hardcore cynical person; I definitely have faith in humanity. But I also see a lot of the strangeness in human behavior and I don’t like phoniness. Los Angeles is a very phony place, so I found it hard to relate to people, because I didn’t believe them.
With ‘Roses Rising,’ there’s a question mark over what drives people to want change. We’re living in a time when it’s unclear what to aspire to or believe in. There’s a lot of distrust in society and humanity. It’s hard to have faith, but people do persevere. I like pulling out the irony and humor of creating these opulent, ridiculous scenarios, because that’s also how we exist; in these ironic and strange circumstances that we’re trying to make sense of.
Leila Hekmat: ‘Roses Rising – The Movement,’ performance at Gropius Bau, 2026 // © Gropius Bau, photo by Amely Sommer
JS: You’re presenting ‘Roses Rising’ at Gropius Bau and HAU, two major institutions in Berlin, a city with a fraught relationship to protest, particularly in the form of state repression and police brutality. How does this context bear on the work?
LH: I was thinking about how museums started to stand apart from the political motivations of the artists they were presenting and was questioning why that was happening. It was a shock to my system. I thought, how could I make a work that could be political and have a subliminal message that no one could refute? I don’t know if I actually achieved that.
I was also thinking about the financial support I get from all these systems that are castrated by the government. I don’t want to lose my funding and then lose the money for all the people that I support within the productions that I make. How do I still try to make work that has any relevance? I don’t feel great being dependent on a system that is so corrupt. Within the institutions are great people—smart, brilliant people. But, we’re all still working within the confines of the corrupt systems that fund us.
Leila Hekmat: ‘Female Remedy,’ 2022, installation view at Haus Am Waldsee // Courtesy the artist, photo by Frank Sperling
JS: A major element of your pieces are the highly intricate costumes that your characters wear, paired with their decadent personalities. What’s the process of making the costumes like, and at what stage are your characters’ personalities formed?
LH: It’s a very long process. It starts with a fascination with a certain thing, such as some 18th century pants. Then, I research that item of clothing and it snowballs in all kinds of directions.
I also sometimes start with the cast of characters. When I know who’s performing a character, this informs the costume. There are lots of steps and different layers and I’m constantly changing my mind. The tailor who I’ve worked with on costumes for the last eight years, Elsa Leguévaques, is constantly taking huge, deep breaths. I have way too many ideas in my scripts. But it’s really fun.
JS: I feel the proliferation of ideas comes across in your abstract, fragmented scenes, or vignettes. What draws you to this form of narrative building?
LH: I always find a location or a situation in which to construct something happening, such as a TV show, or a wedding in a church, or a department store that’s sinking. I give myself a location and a circumstance, and then I make up things to happen there, make up characters to exist there. I look for funny scenarios.
Leila Hekmat: ‘Roses Rising – The Movement,’ performance at Gropius Bau, 2026 // © Gropius Bau, photo by Amely Sommer
JS: Talking of your decadent costumes, opulence also takes form in the music of your productions. How does the music come into the process?
LH: The music is a collaboration between me, Roman Ole and Roman Lemberg. For ‘Gloriette,’ it was Roman and Roman. For ‘The Movement,’ Roman Ole composed the music alone. For ‘The Dinner,’ it’s the both of them.
I create a musical mood or an atmosphere. I also create the lyrics. The references are really inspired by them and their decisions and what instruments they want to use. I think for ‘The Movement,’ we really wanted to do something different, far away from any kind of music we did before. We wanted to go full band, rock show, dance piece. I give them all of the credit in deciding how the musical texture is applied to the shows.
Leila Hekmat: ‘Gloriette,’ 2024 // Courtesy the artist, photo by Amely Sommer
JS: Final question. For ‘Gloriette’ and ‘Roses Rising – The Dinner,’ the works you have presented at HAU, you have offered a performative stage tour for young people, this time for girls, young women and queer youth aged 12 and up. What is the thinking behind offering this?
LH: For ‘Gloriette,’ we did a kid show and it made sense because there were a lot of props and set pieces, a carousel and a horse. I never thought about doing anything like that before, but it was just super nice.
For ‘The Dinner,’ we were trying to figure out what the motivation would be—it’s this idea of micro-communities. The show itself is very cynical and dark. They’re not necessarily good symbols for collective female power. But I wanted to create an intimate atmosphere to talk and present the work to a very specific audience, and see how they take it.
Performance Info
HAU Hebbel am Ufer
Leila Hekmat: ‘Roses Rising – The Dinner’
Performances: Apr. 15, 16 & 18; 8pm and Apr. 17; 7pm
Performative stage tour for girls, young women and queer youth (age 12+): Apr. 18; 2pm
hebbel-am-ufer.de
HAU1, Stresemannstraße 29, 10963 Berlin, click here for map
