In a time not so far from ours… in a land surrounded by fog and shadows lies a city, once lively, loud and free, now in the middle of an ever-growing swamp – a city on the brink of despair.
Six brave people are chosen and sent out on a mission beyond the city limits: can they find the source of despair and the right antidote? An epic journey begins at the edge of the moor in search of hope in dark times.
In an adventurous stage world, characters such as a dangerously empty gut feeling, an oracle in the gambling den and all kinds of obstacles line the path of the ‘Knights of Hope’.
Will they experience disappointment? Definitely.
Will they make it alone? Of course not.
Do they have to network? Of course.
Will they give up? Absolutely not.
And the artistic team networks – mushroom-mycelium-like – beyond fiction and into real life. With GEGENGIFT, the team of the Junge Neuköllner Oper is creating a musical theatre for the first time in the community of young performers and professional singers.
But the team is networking even further. The modular and constantly growing stage set is made from pilmycelium. This is an experimental building material that is currently being actively grown in the laboratories of the TU Berlin until our premiere and is already being used in the construction industry. Thermally insulating, lightweight, water-repellent and compostable – a material for a better future?
Artists and scientists work together like a well-connected network of fungi. To this end, the Neukölln Opera is collaborating with biotechnologist Prof. Dr Vera Meyer and her scientific and student teams at the TU Berlin and the MITKUNSTZENTRALE fungal art laboratory from the House of Materialisation. In addition, students from the interdisciplinary, research-oriented Master’s programme Design and Computation between TU Berlin and UdK Berlin under the direction of Prof. Albert Lang will accompany the artistic research with the mushroom materials.
MUSIC Yuval Halpern TEXT Vera Schindler DIRECTION Bjørn de Wildt STAGE DESIGN Charlotte Morache COSTUME DESIGN Gwendolyn Noltes
WITH
Vivian Yau, Chantale Nurse, Corinna Buchholz, Markus Teichert, Johanna Lanzky, Helena Marte, Lena Wetzel, Nele Langner, Kamil Ahmad, Viktor A. Voigt and the musicians Doron Avraham Segal (Keyboard/Synths), Omri Abramov (EWI/Sax/Flute), Ori Davidson (E-Bass), Vid Jamnik (Vibraphone/Percussion)