Faustus :: 1550 San Remo Drive

To celebrate his 150th birthday, RAUM+ZEIT take Thomas Mann as their starting point for their new VR production. Based on his magnum opus "Doktor Faustus", which he wrote while in exile in California during the Second World War, RAUM+ZEIT tell the story of forbidden love as a pact with the devil. When Thoman Mann reads out the chapter in which the protagonist’s dearly beloved foster son dies a cruel death to his assembled family in the living room of his villa in San Remo Drive in Los Angeles, he is met with general horror. Because as he reads, Frido is playing in the corner, Thomas Mann’s favourite grandson and the spitting image of the dead child in the novel. RAUM+ZEIT interweave the novel with biographical details, virtual and live scenes, to create a dreamlike play on reality and fiction, art and life, desire and guilt.

Ever since their VR-production "ANTIGONE :: COMEBACK" (which was invited to the Schweizer Theatertreffen in 2019), the collective RAUM+ZEIT has been exploring potential spaces for experimentation in new digital media for the performing arts. The hybrid theatre creations by Alexandra Althoff, Lothar Kittstein and Bernhard Mikeska combine virtual and real spaces. They were awarded the Friedrich Luft Prize in 2022 for their last production created at the Berliner Ensemble, "BERLAU :: KÖNIGREICH DER GEISTER".