2023-06-04 08:23:43
The immersive theater project “Relics from the Future” celebrated its somewhat different premiere on Saturday in Innsbruck. There was no applause or even standing ovations in the “immersive theater project”. Although located in the experimental theater stage “K2” in the “House of Music”, it guided the participants through the inner city of Innsbruck using MP3 files and headphones. These collectively experienced emotional and empathetic overwriting of the city.
These are fed primarily from the superimposition of reality that is inevitably experienced and the fiction that is presented. The real character of the Tyrolean state capital, following all, there were naturally many people in the guest gardens on Saturday evening, and the story told at the same time offered friction surfaces, thereby ensuring surreal moments and expanding and refining the experience of the urban space.
The vehicle for this was the narration of an “archive for the future”, led by the fictional character Nada Gruber, which was regarding archiving smells, sounds, thoughts, objects or memories for posterity and thus proving what the humanity once constituted at its core. In the background of this was a dystopian scenario: Humanity would inevitably die out within the next 70 years at the latest because the climate crisis was already too far advanced.
With this gloomy thought in the back of their minds, the audience, accompanied by the voice of speaker Petra Alexandra Pippan, walked primarily through Innsbruck’s old town. Other voices increasingly joined the main narrator: they were real short stories by people who had been asked regarding thoughts, memories or objects that were worth preserving for the theater project.
It happened as it had to happen: Ehmann’s theater project finally threw you back on yourself. The mostly passive visit to real and imaginary places was followed by the inevitable self-questioning: What would you want to archive yourself, what was so important to you in the first place ? Heavily fed with these questions, we went to the Landestheater and there to the rehearsal stage with the melancholic music provided.
All sorts of objects and tangible memories awaited you in this one. Still equipped with headphones and an MP3 player, people paced the area. Alternatively, you might also sit on one of the chairs and listen to the stories of the interviewees, who spread the story behind plush pigs, powder compacts, vinyl records or the like.
There will be no classic end to the evening at the theater, said the director present in a low voice. You are welcome to stay longer, but of course you can also leave. More and more participants followed this guideline without applause, quietly and sporadically and left the rehearsal stage – possibly with the realization that they had just experienced an extremely unusual “evening at the theatre”.
(SERVICE – “Relics from the future” by Philipp J. Ehmann. Director and piece development: Philipp J. Ehmann. Dramaturgy and piece development: Laura Nöbauer. Sound: Gunter Eßig. Props: Philipp Baumgartner. With: Petra Alexandra Pippan (Nada Gruber) Further performances: 7th, 11th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 21st and 22nd June. https://www.landestheater.at/)
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