Die Ruhe

Are you looking for a way to recover from trauma, exhaustion and confusion? Follow us to the Regeneration Centre in Hamburg-Altona, where you will be prepared for your final relocation to a dense forest. There, you can practise your newly-learned behavioural patterns and ways of life.
If you follow SIGNA’s invitation, you can expect an immersive theatre experience of more than five hours which will confront you with yourself and others in a seductive and intimate parallel world of powerful imagery.

Statement of the jury

SIGNA’s response to the post-humanist theories and ideas that haunt many current debates is a concrete concept of how humanity might disappear, one human being at a time. Groups of 35 visitors each are invited to free themselves of the bustle of urban life at the “Erholungsheim Hamburg (Recreational Facility Hamburg)”. “Leitwander*innen (Guide Wanderers)”, who have enrolled in the institute’s programme and are already on the way to becoming one with the forest, guide the audience through bizarre rooms in small groups, trying to seduce them at the same time. And so, the five and a half hours-long performance feels like an invitation to get comfortable within this sect-like community. If you accept this invitation, you will climb deep down into a rabbit hole of manipulation and abuse, death wishes and desperation. In this highly immersive setting, the audience has an opportunity to experience at firsthand how easy it is to lose yourself in a (conspiracy-)cult.

Tojuror Georg Kasch’s video statement in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library (in German)