Klaus Mann outlined in his novel the timeless dancing on the volcano and the fall of the glamorous. A panorama of his contemporaries, the artists and intellectuals, children of the gods of the Golden Twenties, who did not want to give up their ecstasy even when swastikas were already flying over Babylon. But above all, the text is a portrait of a famous actor: Gustaf Gründgens. Staging by Thomas Jonigk at the Staatstheater Kassel.
Starting from an omnipresent end-time mood, Emre Akal and his team ask for this: "What is it that you are looking for? What comes after the imaginable future, after the collapse of liberal democracy and old Europe as we knew it? In a formally abstract world of images, they let the future rub against the past - always remembering: What are we leaving behind as society today, the people of the future, and will we have learned from our mistakes? What remains of... us?
Documentary film maker Felix Hentschel accompanied the production of the Mixed-Reality-Techno-Opera MAYA and held talks with the artists involved. The resulting film (ca. 40 min) illuminates the development of the Maya character and provides insights into the conception of the music and the design of the MAYA augmented reality app.
In this "Another kind of Romeo & Juliet", as director Luk Perceval also calls his evening, Tobias Moretti takes on the role of the orderly, meticulous librarian Désiré, who decides to become demented before his 74th birthday out of displeasure over his life. He wants to spend his last years of his life in peace: in a nursing home. There he sees Rosa again, the great, unfulfilled love of his youth, the "Julia", which he could never forget.
The standard theatre situation was reconfigured to an installation- and rave-like situation by means of the MAYA augmented reality App. Alive and present as an actor was only the mezzo-soprano Martina Koppelstetter. The digital world from which she originated was only visible through smartphones and AR. Experiencing this world through own smartphones, the audience strolled through the ruins and became the counterpart for MAYA with its presence, augmenting MAYA’s loneliness: MAYA had to sing against a mass of audience members gaping through their smartphones.
Hans Schnier's relationship with his girlfriend Marie is a thing of the past. But he can't let her go. Again and again he is haunted by nightmarish pictures and figures from his former life. It rages in him and he rages along. From the inner emigration he defends his standards of value against the German restoration society. Staging by Thomas Jonigk at the Schauspiel Köln.
Isolated from the world, the composer Jerome works obsessively on a monumental work about love. For this he samples everyday noises and scraps of speech, which he continuously records. Staging of the comedy by Alain Ayckbourn by Ulrike Arnold at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden.