Behind the Rooms

Photo: Still - Schauspiel Köln
By Wilke Weermann
online theatre
In German
Digital
Premiere:
May 5, 2023
There’s this building. From the outside it’s inconspicuous, but upon entering it’s apparent that something’s awry with the building’s inner life. Rooms shift, doors appear, a backyard that wasn’t there at the last viewing opens up. And there are the anonymous letters. They warn about the “things behind the walls, beyond the rooms.” There were sensitive documents in the stucco, among other things – materials buried and lost in the Cologne City Archive collapse, but weren’t officially listed – so they say. An ominous municipal authority intervenes which is in charge of “recording and monitoring destabilizing matters.” Between horror story and alternate reality emerges a labyrinthian network of family secrets, political coverup, and the manic search for the “one truth.”

Roman Senkl researches the potential of virtual worlds and interactive storytelling in the theater under the label of minus.eins. For Schauspiel Köln he has developed a digital city project with hybrid parts.
direction: Roman Senkl · minus.eins
Creative Coding & Virtual Production: Nils Corte · minus.eins · Phil Jungschläger
3D Animation: Nils Gallist
camera work & video design: Julian Pache
Live-cutting: Jonathan Kastl
Music: Harald Kainer
light: Kasper Hagin
dramaturgy: Lea Goebel