"Isolation" - Schauspiel Frankfurt

Hello from the other side

The name says it all: an almost empty stage divided by four walls into three rooms open to the audience. One by one, the three players find themselves in them. Each of them seems to be trapped between their walls and must find a coping strategy for their isolation. And even though they are so alone, there still seems to be one thing: pressure to perform. Dontcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Therefore in one of the chambers there's gasping to a home workout, in the next there are tears of rage shed over a torn school report, and in the third there's a girl cowering in the corner with her legs pulled up to her stomach. Now one of the three performers begins to sing. Obviously, there seems to be a time after foreclosure to prepare for. She practices various dance moves while singing Adele, Billie Eilish, The Pussycat Dolls and Britney Spears. When she's unsure of the lyrics, she breaks off and gets into it again, doing little laps around her two square metres. For the first time, the isolated seem to take notice of each other and the annoyed neighbour feels disturbed in her yoga practice and tries to stop the performance within the performance by shushing her intensely. The singer's response: Don't you know that you're toxic?
At some point, the argument through the fabric wall is interrupted by a techno beat and the young people leave their chambers with their eyes fixed on their cell phones. Their faces appear on the wall behind them in front camera mode - a way of seeing faces that many of us have grown accustomed to since 2020. There's a comic-like filter over them, and their movements are jerky and rushed. Even though they are no longer physically separated from each other, the three do not manage to make contact with each other; they are too spellbound by their screens. They fall into a robotic choreography that leads them through the entire room until a loud siren breaks through the scene. Fire outbreak? Bomb scare? End of the world? Terrified, the three flee back into lonely but safe isolation. One of them shrieks desperately and bangs her head against the wall. Sirens screaming techno and: Black.

text by flo rieder