PERPETUUM
City without hardship.
Berlin Premiere 1 August 2019
Revised, tête-à-tête Rastatt 30 May 2024
PERPETUUM is more relevant than ever! Whether it's ChatGBT, chatbots, AI-supported search engines, fear of blackouts and the associated question of the energy of the future... PERPETUUM makes a groundbreaking discovery and allows humanity to dare an urban utopia.
The reason: A complete plan of a perpetual motion machine, the Perpetuum mobile, was found. The inventor is Johann Bessler aka Orffyreus – Medicus, Mechanicus and Alchemist of the early 18th century. Once set in motion, his “eternal wheel” once kept on turning for many weeks.
Theatre ANU stages a city without hardship.
The futurist Paul Scheerbart envisions his idea of the “Perpeh” by means of a crazy projection apparatus. In an impressive experiment, visitors can admire the so-called “butterfly effect”. And in front of a large cross, “Frau Mehr” ponders about a world that no longer needs God.
Science has long since banished perpetual motion to the realm of the impossible. Yet still: don’t we already live in a perpetual world wheel that, once set in motion, can no longer be stopped and produces a “more” of everything?
This profound and richly pictorial round dance presents five poetic views from the fields of religion, art, science, vision of the future and history and poses the question of the city of the future. How can the social human being live in a future community if everything that surrounds it is designed solely for individual well-being and expansion?
PERPETUUM can be staged in a city (indoor and outdoor) or in a park. The production was created as a commissioned staging for the city of Bad Karlshafen in 2018, in cooperation with the Kultursommer Nordhessen, produced in the Theaterhaus Berlin Mitte.
Here is our digital catalogue. Please click on the image to browse.
