Cattle Call - Qlab artistic development

Cattle Call - artistic development: 30 November – 11 December 2026, Warehouse9, Copenhagen.

Cattle Call is a performance about precarious work, identity, exhaustion and humiliation seen through a queer lens. A "cattle call" is the term for large, open auditions where hopeful actors try their luck - with a number stuck to their belly, they stream in like a herd of cattle waiting to be slaughtered.

We meet a creature with long ears and small calf horns on its forehead, trapped in an endless open audition, desperately trying to figure out what the invisible casting director actually wants. The creature is both monster and pop princess - without being particularly good at either - and we follow its lonely work of selling itself and finding a role to play.

Throughout, it is questioned by the unknown casting entity, which communicates only through text on a screen. The small creature tries to answer a series of random questions about its experiences and abilities, but instead ends up talking about its exes. It dances, sings and shifts between diva and monster roles like Frankenstein's monster, Gollum, Dobby, Marilyn Monroe, Barbra Streisand and Dolly Parton. Along the way, the creature is interrupted by a sharp, echoing buzzer sound and a red light from the absent casting director.

Through a horror-inspired universe, Cattle Call explores what it means for a working life when identity becomes a commodity you constantly have to "sell yourself", and how humiliation and casting are connected to queerness and otherness.

Cattle Call is part of Qlab - Warehouse9's lab for artistic development. As part of this residency, a public screening is shown on 11 November 2026 - more information to follow.

Performer/script/scenography: Filip Vest
Music: Francesca Burattelli
Choreographic consultant: Louise Paolo de Venecia Gile

Cattle Call is supported by Knud Højgaard's Foundation and the Beckett Foundation. Warehouse9 is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation and Copenhagen Municipality.

Access information
Warehouse9 has a level-free entrance to the venue and a gender-neutral