Theater Eisleben - No Life - Stage Design

No Life is a play by polnish playwrite Marzena Rylko in which Norbert, a gaming addicted teen is less and less capable of separating his experiences in diverse games with his real life. Put in scene by director Philipp Oehme at Theater Eisleben in the german translation by Monika Paul it was Benjamin Wilkes first solo performance and he took the opportunity to draw the audience in an increasingly mad swirl of identities, poses and adventures. MXZEHN was commissioned to create a scenery that opened the narrow space of the studio stage into a virtual "mind world" of a disturbed character while staying sane in a very narrow time and budget frame. After a few iterations we ended up with creating a labyrinthic virtual maze architecture with slightly disturbed and glitchy texture that proivded a lot of different views.

We decided to avoid real world imagery but focus on the amplification of the heros state. Projected onto two screens, facing the audience in a 45° angle to each other, the animations created an almost immersive experience around the actor - his inner world. We then programmed a custom software solution in #touchdesigner that allowed us to search and find camera positions, lighting and color settings and many other properties to shape the rooms according to the concept for each scene in realtime.

Foto: Markus Scholz

Powered by #alphamoonbase.berlin Tau Ceti preset engine we were able to define fourtysix different settings with animated transitions in sync with all the lighting cues - in only one day. In the last step, an automated playout transfered the scenes to videolopps, so the show could be played back alongside light and sound by the house technicians with #madmapper.

The pre-visualization allowed us to prepare scenes based on a video recording of the rehearsals and helped to play out the videos for the house. Many thanks belongs to the whole team in Eisleben, beforee, behind, next to and on the stage for making this a fun, artistic and painless experience with a great outcome. Special thanks to Christian Faust who supported me all along the way, transferred the show to mad mapper and has been running it ever since.

Regie: Philipp Oehme
Video / Ausstattung: Stefan Kraus
Dramaturgie: Ann-Kathrin Hanss
Regieassistenz / Inspizienz / Soufflage: Heidrun Pröhle
Regiehospitanz / Soufflage: Charlotte Pracht

Norbert: Benjamin Wilke

No Life / Theater Eisleben --> See the show!

Foto: Markus Scholz

Foto: Markus Scholz

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