Beautiful and daily Stonings

"changing the end of the stories we do not read anymore"

Beautiful and daily Stonings (the Sleeping Wife)

Art Territories Collective

Premiered at Theater Atelier Stuttgart, 03.07.2026

How deeply have stories about love, beauty and feminine fragility shaped the way we perceive the world? How much violence lies dormant beneath their polished surfaces?

"Beautiful and daily Stonings (the Sleeping Wife)" begins where one of Western culture's most celebrated fairy tales truly began: Talia, Sun and Moon, the story written by Giambattista Basile in 1634 that centuries later evolved into "Sleeping Beauty".

Long before the kiss, long before the prince became a hero, there was another body, another silence, another ending disguised as romance.

The performance returns to this forgotten source to question the narratives that have educated our imagination for generations. It examines how beauty has been constructed as a mechanism of power, how desire has been confused with possession, and how violence becomes almost invisible once it is wrapped in ritual, spectacle and celebration.

Weddings, crowns, dresses, dolls and happy endings are no longer symbols of innocence, but part of an intricate machinery that transforms domination into myth.

Interweaving Basile's tale with contemporary references and recent real-life cases linked to the disturbing culture of sleeping content, the work dissolves the boundary between fiction and reality. The fairy tale ceases to belong to the past. It reveals itself as an operating system that continues to shape female bodies, the concept of vulnerability, gazes and desires long after childhood has ended.

Blending live performance, installation, video and soundscapes, "Beautiful and daily Stonings (the Sleeping Wife)" unfolds as both a theatrical ritual and a forensic investigation.

Rather than retelling a story, it excavates it. Layer by layer, image by image, it drills through the glittering surface of the fairy tale until only its hidden architecture remains: the sleeping body, the gaze that claims it, the silence that protects it, and the promise of happiness built upon all three.

In the end, the question is no longer what happened to Sleeping Beauty.

The question is how many generations have learned to call that story beautiful.

CREDITS

Concept, dramaturgy and artistic direction
Karina Pino Gallardo

Performers
Karina Pino Gallardo

Maya Siegle

Emilia Dorr

Artistic assistance

Emilia Dorr

Movement coach and assistance

Angelica Topffstedt

Sound design