KABARET KLUB is not another nostalgic twenties night. It is Lilly Mortis' attempt to plug today's queer cabaret directly into the electric current of Weimar Berlin. The same excess, the same gender trouble, the same feeling of dancing on the volcano, just a hundred years and one fascist backlash later.
"We are in the cabaret of the twenties, just in a different century," Lilly says. "I'm not interested in retro cosplay. I'm interested in what this art form can do right now."
One hundred years in a glitch
Ballhaus wears its twenties substance in plain sight. A spiral staircase, old wall telephones, golden busts along the walls. Mortis uses exactly that. For a moment, whoever enters the room does not know whether it is 1926 or 2026.
This glitch between the decades is not a nostalgic costume party. The queer cabaret of the Weimar Republic always carried its political threat with it. And exactly this threat, Mortis says, is tangible again today. The fear of then is the fear of now. The rage of then is the rage of now.
From queer theory to the cabaret stage
Lilly comes from academia and queer theory. She once lectured at King's College in London and brings that background on stage.
Between live songs, razor-sharp hosting, drag, political asides and flashes of erotica, KABARET KLUB treats cabaret as a living art form, not a museum aesthetic.
Rather than seating you safely in the dark while the show happens far away, KABARET KLUB wants you inside the world it creates. Ballhaus becomes a space where time feels unstable, where cabaret history leaks into the present and where glamour and threat sit very close together.
Real people, not roles
What happens in the different positions in the room are not cast roles. They are cameos by real artists from Berlin's subculture. People who actually live the worlds they show on stage.
The show negotiates questions that are banal for Mortis and still never resolved. The right to exist, to be safe, to be self-determined, regardless of origin or gender. The evening becomes political through visibility. Through people who are simply there, in their full, contradictory reality. As Mortis herself sums it up: a show made of "flashing lights, sparkling personalities, and a pegging of the patriarchy".
Beauty as a delivery system for politics
"It has to look fabulous, that’s how we lure people in," Lilly says. "The trick is to build something so beautiful and fun that people open their hearts, and then the message can actually land."
Underneath the sequins, the politics are almost disarmingly simple: everyone deserves safety and self-determination, no one is illegal, only yes means yes.
"It's queer, anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist, and somehow still just basic humanism," Lilly says. "It sounds banal, but apparently we still have to repeat it."
Cabaret as survival, not vintage styling
For people who usually work through these questions on the dance floor, in kink spaces or at demos, KABARET KLUB is another entry point into the same fight. A night where rage and tenderness share a stage and where cabaret is treated as a way of surviving, not just as vintage styling.
You don't sit back and consume a picture of old Berlin. You stand in a room full of queer bodies insisting that the story is not over.
About Lilly Mortis
Lilly Mortis is an artivist working across cabaret, immersive theater and film. Beyond her stage work as MC, dramaturge and producer, she writes for the screen, with credits including Teaches of Peaches (Teddy Award, Berlinale) and KitKatClub – Kinks of Berlin, and sits on the curatorial and organizational team of the Queer Performance Festival (QPF) in Berlin.
A stage of her own
In September 2026, the volcano gets a new address on the cultural map. KABARET KLUB has been named part of this year’s TAG DER CLUBKULTUR festival week, an acknowledgment that lands somewhere between overdue and obvious. For Lilly, the club was never just a venue for a night out. It is a cultural space in its own right, and now the city agrees.
The recognition arrives alongside another kind of unveiling.
Lilly also writes for the screen under the name Susanne Heuer, and her film KitkatClub – Kinks of Berlin opens in theaters on September 10, 2026. Its characters carry two identities, revealed slowly, unevenly, at their own pace. It is not hard to see why the story pulled at her. Somewhere in the writing of it, she decided to do the same, and bring her two names, her two lives, back into one frame.
Before you mark your calendar: always double-check dates, location, and ticket info directly with the organizers.
Even the best promises come with fine print.