»What keeps me awake at night is the unsolvable riddle of sustainability and eternal life on our planet. Breathing in what others need, breathing out pure poison. But yet I dream. Dissecting bodies, finding plastic trash. Spirals of recycling and slime trails. Rising sea levels. Oceanic feelings. Liquid phantasies. I see foam-born hybrids on toxic beaches.

What is life? What is care? Is common survival on a destroyed planet even possible?«

As of June 2018, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed 310 extinct species, 117 possibly extinct species, 14 extinct species in the wild, eight extinct subspecies and five extinct subspecies of molluscs in the wild.

»Ok, I wonder – if everything would be fluid, I mean, really everything, would there still be matter? And if there is no matter, would things still matter? If everything would be fluid, would fluidity then be considered stable? Can something that is constantly shifting its shape last forever, is something that is fluid stable in its own way?«

Let’s make kin with the last living Great Ramshorn snail and form a cluster of mutual care. Not extracting but providing, forming Sym Bodies out of human humus. Getting rid of the spine, using lungs under water, making skin produce slime. Genetics. Metamorphosis. The future belongs to Children of Compost.

The anthropocene urges us to seek new solidarities and symbiosis among industrial and ecological ruins. This is the fundamental impetus for the project Children of Compost: A ritualistic dance-performance, in which the performers grapple with the peculiarities, the way of living and the physicality of a critically endangered species: the freshwater ramshorn snail, attempting to adhere to the invertebrate's body and thereby questioning our notions of normal and natural.
We explore the spine as main cartilage and bony structure of the human kind and trie to reflect what it could mean to be an invertebrate with the help of slime.
You use multiple narrative threats, that entangle with one another in the course of the performance . The main narrative was displayed in form of a video game which the performers play on stage. Within the game, you walk through a building - containing 5 different floors. Each floor functioning as a level and has a different focus within the anthropocentric discourse.

Direction & Performance

MAX GADOW

JANNE NORA KUMMER



Choreography & Performance
AMARNAH AMULUDUN



Music & Performance

MAGIC ISLAND



Dramaturgy & Text Edition

SVEN BJÖRN POPP

FEE RÖMER



Video

SAM ALDRIDGE



Stage & Costume Design
MARILENA BÜLD



Technical Management
& Lighting Design

STEFAN DAMNIG



Assistance

ISABELLE WAPNITZ



Production

JOHANNA J. THOMAS

LISANNE GROTZ






A virtuellestheater production in co-operation with BALLHAUS OST, 2018. Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds, die Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa and Bezirksamt Pankow, Amt für Weiterbildung und Kultur – Fachbereich Kunst und Kultur.