Memories of Snow

Teona Galgoțiu, Roman Senkl und minus.eins.labs

Theater und Philharmonie Essen [Deutschland]

Theaterstück in Augmented Reality

60 minutes

"The week she turned 18 was the last time my mother saw snow. On my own 18th birthday, she organised a surprise party, with all the fans she could find whirling paper snow through the air. The dress code was “0 degrees”, but after an hour of dancing we were all soaking wet, so we took off our ski suits and jumped into the lake."

Author Teona Galgoţiu, director and digital artist Roman Senkl, and the team at minus.eins.labs – Phil Hagen Jungschlaeger, Philip Bußmann, and others – take their audience on a journey through digital places that Cali, the central character of the story, has created and left behind. In this immersive augmented reality experience, participants dive deep into Cali's collected memories of her everyday life, her family, her love and the fears of a world in which the threat of apocalypse is ever-present.

Further informationCali's poetic, surreal worlds of a possible future repeatedly reveal frightening parallels to our current world and its possible development. With great visual and linguistic poetry, the end of the world and the question of what remains or should remain are explored in a playful and melancholic way.

The theatre collective minus.eins.labs translates central characters and motifs from Galgoţius' play ‘I can only fall asleep, if I imagine it is snowing’ into an immersive AR installation. Generational conflicts, the climate crisis, fear of change and the hope for honest emotional acceptance all appear in it. The audience, as a group of six people, takes an almost archaeological journey through digital spaces that allow them to experience disappearance and loss in an unsentimental way, while at the same time telling of the fundamental possibility of a new beginning beyond the Anthropocene. The intertwining of augmented reality and network technology created by minus.eins.labs enables the audience to enter a unique, immersive world together – between dream, memory, artificial intelligence and ‘Matrix’. And with the help of performance capture systems, the actors were not only able to lend their voices to their avatars, but also breathe life into them.

Text & Adaption Teona Galgoţiu, Roman Senkl

Künstlerische Leitung Roman Senkl

Creative Coding Phil Jungschlaeger
Szenografie (digital & analog) Philip Bussmann

Gestaltung 3D-Visuals Nils Gallist

Kreative Produktionsleitung Carolina Brinkmann

Musik/Sound Harald Kainer

Dramaturgy Maximilian Löwenstein, Margrit Sengebusch

Guide Ronit Winkler

with Lene Dax (Cali), Sümeyra Yilmaz (Isa), Christopher Heisler (Jo), Franka Forkel, Studentin der Folkwang Universität der Künste (Ema), Floriane Kleinpass (Anto), Jan Pröhl (Damian), Hän Nguyễn (Erzählerin, Stimme Tonaufnahme)

Premiere 2025, ADA Grillo Theatre, Essen

Teona Galgoțiu is a film director, author and cultural manager. Her short films have been screened at international festivals such as the Jihlava International Film Festival, BIEFF and EastwardsProspectus, and her writings have been published in several anthologies and online publications.

Roman Senkl works as a director, author and freelance artist with a focus on digital and hybrid theatre. His works have been invited to the ‘Digital Showcase’ of the Berlin Theatertreffen, nominated for the FAUST Prize and awarded over 20 international creative prizes, such as the Golden Lion/Cannes. He has lectured and taught at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Princeton University, Cornell University and the University of Cambridge, among others. He has directed the ‘Laboratory for Digital Arts’ (Berliner Festspiele), the XRT (Nuremberg State Theatre) and Kasino.Digital (Burgtheater Vienna), among others. He is currently preparing ‘Solaris’ at the Burgtheater Vienna and the ‘Ring Cycle’ (Ring 10010110) for the Bayreuth Festival.

Phil Hagen Jungschlaeger works as a director, author and freelance artist with a focus on digital and hybrid theatre. His works have been invited to the ‘Digital Showcase’ of the Berlin Theatertreffen, nominated for the FAUST Prize and awarded over 20 international creative prizes, such as the Golden Lion/Cannes. He has lectured and taught at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Princeton University, Cornell University and the University of Cambridge, among others. He has directed the ‘Laboratory for Digital Arts’ (Berliner Festspiele), the XRT (Nuremberg State Theatre) and Kasino.Digital (Burgtheater Vienna), among others. He is currently preparing ‘Solaris’ at the Burgtheater Vienna and the ‘Ring Cycle’ (Ring 10010110) for the Bayreuth Festival.

Philip Bußmann ist is a stage designer and video artist. He has been working for international dance, theatre and opera productions since 1995. Recently, he has also been devoting more time to independent installations, photographic works, performance and AR/VR projects. His most notable works include pieces with the New York Wooster Group (1990s) and choreographer William Forsythe (2000s). He has enjoyed a long-standing collaboration with Flemish theatre director Luk Perceval since 2004. His productions have taken him to the Thalia Theater Hamburg, NTGent, LA Opera, English National Opera, Hamburg State Opera, Münchner Kammerspiele, Schauspiel Frankfurt, Volkstheater Wien, Stary Teatr Kraków and Berliner Ensemble, among others. He has worked with Nicolas Stemann, Matthias Hartmann, Sasha Waltz, Wanda Golonka, Richard Siegal, Diane Paulus, Ullrich Rasche and minus. eins (Nils Corte & Roman Senkl) as well as for Costume National and Ermenegildo Zegna. Bußmann's installations have been exhibited at the Ursula Blickle Foundation, the Goethe Institute Montreal, 2121 Design Sight Tokyo, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts, the Folkwang Museum Essen and the Deutsches Romantik Museum Frankfurt.