A PERFECT SKY

In the organizer's words:

a project by Falk Richter and Anouk van Dijk
Director: Falk Richter

Not only is there talk of "artificial intelligence" everywhere, AI is already intervening in everyday life in almost all areas of life, taking over administration, organizing our love life, determining the soundtrack of the S-Bahn journey, reducing errors in the operating theatre and planning vacations. She writes poems and letters of application, art criticism and plays. Behind it all is the dream of perfection, the longing to fill in the gaps, to make the world a better place, to free it from what, as "human error", is the cause of misunderstandings, annoyance, effort and pain. Alongside this triumph of speed, accuracy and precision, the human body seems strangely fragile and weak, imperfect in its transience, its ageing, its fatigue. But isn't that exactly what makes people uncopyable: the hesitation, the unpredictability of feeling and the power to think change?

In their new collaboration, author and director Falk Richter and choreographer Anouk van Dijk explore this contradiction. The triumph of the machines comes at a time when it seems to be becoming increasingly difficult to be together, to overcome loneliness. Richter and van Dijk's new play tells of fragility and fragmentation, of robot romance and analog longing, of love in the age of its technical reproducibility.

Falk Richter is one of the most important authors in Germany; his plays, which he often directs himself, have been translated into numerous languages. He works regularly at the SchauSpielHaus, where he first staged his scenic approach to Elfriede Jelinek's "Endsieg" in December 2024. He has a long working partnership with Anouk van Dijk, which began with "Nothing hurts" (1999) in Hamburg. Together they have developed numerous works for the Berliner Schaubühne, the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and the Münchner Kammerspiele.

With: Emma Bogerd, Sandra Gerling, Christoph Jöde, Morgan Lugo, Javier Monzón García, Alberta von Poelnitz, Maximilian Scheidt, Tiemen Stemerding and Ummi Yanuba

Text and direction: Falk Richter
Choreography: Anouk van Dijk
Stage: Wolfgang Menardi
Costumes: Nina Wetzel
Music: Nils Ostendorf
Video: Sébastien Dupouey Sébastien Dupouey
Lighting: Annette ter Meulen
Dramaturgy: Ludwig Haugk

Further information: A PERFECT SKY | Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg