HOKUS POKUS

In HOKUSPOKUS, the ensemble explores the question of what kind of stories can help us find our bearings in times of loss and disorientation. If we claim that the roots of today's crises lie in the stories we have told ourselves, this could also give rise to the hope that storytelling could also play a role in how we find ways through crises. One of the problems that religious myths have to solve is that they cannot allow humans to emerge 'naturally' in the form of a child, because a child would not be able to survive on its own. Therefore, the 'first human' always emerges in fully adult form, whether created by a deity or grown from an animal or a tree. Just as humans transgress the divine commandments, so do the characters who do not abide by the rules of the game. They transgress boundaries. While the play of the masked figures is speechless, in the sense of 'without text', in HOKUSPOKUS the actors' real children lend their voices to the play. The profane life of the actors repeatedly breaks into the play through the voices of the children. They ask questions, have their own view of things, disagree or simply want their mother or father to come home. The children counteract the creative work of their parents, pull them back into life and yet are part of both worlds, the real and the artificial.

When asked 'what is art', the Italian theater maker Roberto Ciulli answers: "To make something in competition with God that God had forgotten to make." This could also be a working motto for