Season 2019/2020

Marc Sinan / Tobias Rausch / Konrad Kästner
Chaosmos – A logistics opera

Artistic direction: Tobias Rausch, Konrad Kästner
Composition: Marc Sinan
Direction and video: Konrad Kästner
Text: Tobias Rausch
Stage and costume: Eyleen König

Team. The author and theatre director Tobias Rausch, the film and theatre director Konrad Kästner and the guitarist and composer Marc Sinan met as a team for the first time in 2018 as part of their joint multimedia music theatre project “Hecheln. A Trip into Textile” at the Theater Bielefeld. “Chaosmos” is their second collaboration.

Project. Not without irony Sinan / Rausch / Kästner call their project produced within the framework of NOperas! an “opera”.

“Chaosmos” is an interactive experimental arrangement for orchestra, soloists, performers and forklift trucks. It deals with the problems of human systems of order, the attempt to subject the world to rational control and thus make it controllable. The place of action is “the logistics centre” that calls itself “our world” (Rausch). This is where global financial flows and supply chains intersect, and whoever works here is himself only a wheel in the structure. Hardly does his work get along with questioning his own role. But as the system becomes more and more disruptive, disturbing questions arise: Is there a fundamental flaw in it? Who does it serve at all, if not perhaps only itself?

From its fundamental reflection on questions of order, “Chaosmos” does not spare music either. Marc Sinan’s composition contains a complex system of order in whose organisation the audience is involved in every performance.

First production: Oper Wuppertal (premiere: 11.01.2020)

The planned performance dates in Halle and Bremen had to be cancelled due to corona. The project was completed in a film version: “Chaosmos – The Film“.

Cast Wuppertal
Annemie Twardawa (Jay), Rike Schuberty / Marie Bretschneider (Joe)
Wendy Krikken (soprano), Iris Marie Sojer (mezzo-soprano), Adam Temple-Smith (tenor), Timothy Edlin (baritone)
Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal

Photos of the premiere at the Wuppertal Opera © Jens Grossmann