In RIGHT OF PASSAGE, machina eX adopts a new experimental format to explore the state of being stuck, the feeling of being permanently ‘in transit,’ and the dread of being stopped in your tracks.
The numbers in the camp at the Lorian border just keep on growing. Hoping to find a better, safer life, migrants continue to arrive from all over the region—but few can meet the increasingly strict entry requirements. The camp becomes an independent sociotope, where inhabitants are united by the struggle for documents and a dignified life in the no man’s land between nations. The camp’s inhabitants engage in collaboration, mutual aid, and trade, but there are also power imbalances and exploitation.
The larger and more autonomous the community grows, the more critically the surrounding political players view it. When the political situation in the region destabilizes, the survival of the camp is increasingly threatened. Pressure on the existing inhabitants escalates, while more and more new arrivals stream into the camp. As the Lorian Republic pursues its own agenda, the border becomes more and more difficult to cross, in danger of closing altogether. Those who don’t make it to the other side soon risk being deported.
Nominated for the Friedrich-Luft-Preis 2015
Premiere / Venues
Premiere in March 2014 at the FFT Düsseldorf
November 2014 at the ROXY Birsfelden
March 2015 at Südpol Luzern
May 2015 in the studiobühneköln
May 2015 at Gessnerallee Zürich
June 2015 at the Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster
June 2015 at the HAU Hebbel am Ufer
As an audience member, do I follow the stories, do I participate in the group puzzles, or do I deal with my documents? Based on their decision, everyone has a different experience. By taking its cues from the components of computer games, “Right of Passage” masters the challenge of interactive theater: finding the balance between agency and narration, that point where a story opens itself to individual input and still retains its essential form.
Maja Beckers, Süddeutsche Zeitung
[…] unbiased, perplexed, overwhelmed, overstimulated, baffled and enthusiastic. You receive your reward roughly 3 hours later – something I have never experienced anywhere else.
Garvin Hicking, supergarv.de
Concept: machina eX /// Script and Performance: Anan Fries and Laura Naumann /// Production and Artistic Direction: Laura Schäffer /// Technical Direction, Electronics and Game Design: Jan Philip Steimel /// Interactive design: Robin Krause, Lasse Marburg /// Sound Design: Mathias Prinz /// Performance: Florian Stamm, Antonia Tittel, Jan Jaroszek /// Staging: Franziska Riedmiller, För Künkel /// Costumes: Daniela Bayer
Production: machina eX and FFT Düsseldorf. Coproduction: ROXY Birsfelden, Theaterhaus Gessnerallee, studiobühneköln, and the Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster. Funded under the rubric of “Game ON Stage” in the Doppelpass Fund of the Federal Cultural Foundation and in Switzerland by the Cultural Committee Canton Basel-Landschaft