Imagine: You were launched into space at the height of the Cold War – 30 years ago. Your space station is a secret collaboration with your archenemy. Then the Iron Curtain fell and your space agencies conveniently forgot about you and your co-commander from the opposite side. The two of you have struggled for mental and physical survival ever since. And so has this planet Earth below you. post theater has created a situation in which the politics and psychology of the 20th century’s former East and former West, pessimism and optimism, meet in the form of two juxtaposed characters.
360 degree video dome meets surround sound installation to bring a space station on stage. Science-FACTion meets a political as well as psychological drama. This theater piece uses the set of the interactive, thematically related performance “Satellites”.
Premiere and Touring
Premiere: May 2019,
English Theatre Berlin
Press Quotes
“It looks beautiful: there is a white, planetary hemisphere on the stage of the Ballhaus Ost – in which two astronauts are deeply asleep. In the meantime, we observe on the skin of the capsule the drama of the universe.… There is no lack of courage to go for a weird approach in a retro-futuristic scenario. This has to be appreciated. This strange forgotten-about space station that surfaces suddenly in the present frees its inhabitants from all category entanglements with contemporary life and allows their thoughts incredible freedom.”
(Doris Meierhenrich, Berliner Zeitung – on a prior version)
Documentation
Credits
Artistic Directors: Max Schumacher, Hiroko Tanahashi
Theater Directors: Daniel Brunet, Max Schumacher
Performers: Mareile Metzner, Patrick Khatami (Mission Leave for Good), Mareile Metzner, Christoph Schüchner (Mission One Thousand Years)
Voice Actor: Tomas Spencer
Music and Sound Design: Sibin Vassliev
Stage Design: Venelin Shurelov, Max Schumacher
Media Art: Yoann Trellu, Venelin Shurelov
Costume Design: Elica Georgieva
Lighting Design: Fabian Bleisch, Elliot Bursch
Graphic Design: Hiroko Tanahashi
PR and Press Contact: Heike Diehm, k3berlin
Production Management: Mario Stumpfe, artkrise.
A production of post theater (Stuttgart/Berlin) in cooperation with SubHuman Theater (Sofia) and English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center.
Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
The set, music and video work has been funded by LAFT BW / Ministry of Culture of the State of Baden-Württemberg and supported by the Goethe Institut Sofia, the Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria, the International Theater, the Varna Summer festival and Digital Arts Festival Sofia.