Exit Hambi – Ein Escape Room zur Rettung der Welt

In the organizer's words:

A play, a debate, a game.

"Hambi stays!" - sounds like longing, certainty, failure, provocation, utopia. "Hambi stays!" is the collective cry of a movement that has been campaigning for decades to protect a small piece of forest in the open-cast lignite mine in the Lower Rhine region.

What is it all about?

The clearing of the Hambach Forest for the extraction of lignite has moved many people, as the very controversial positions on the preservation of this forest have led to enormous tensions.
→ Firstly, there is RWE, which mines coal and uses it to generate energy.
→ Then there are the many people from the region who are campaigning against the felling of the trees.
→ There are hundreds of tree squatters who radically oppose the clearing.
→ And last but not least, politics, the judiciary and the police are of course centrally involved.

Over the many years of fierce disputes, the "Hambi" has thus become a symbol in the field of tension between the energy industry and the climate catastrophe.

What happens at Exit Hambi?

Exit Hambi. An escape room to save the world aims to bring perspectives to life and put them up for debate. The evening is being created together with participants from the Hambach Forest conflict and actors from Schauspielhaus Bochum. In the church of St. Anna in Bochum-Hamme, a place of debate and negotiation, of play and theater will be created.

After the joint onboarding, the visitors will be playfully involved in situations from the forest in several rooms. The church space becomes a kind of escape room in which tasks have to be solved, people have to position themselves and come to an agreement.

Finally, the pit has its say. This huge, deep hole, at the edge of which the Hambi stands, gets involved. It speaks to us - and its story goes back a long way. At her side: (ancient) animals, mythological figures and a very wise atmospheric chemist. The text by playwright Mehdi Moradpour, written on the occasion of Exit Hambi, poetically and humorously raises the big questions of man and nature and invites us to a communal moment of pause.

P.S.: "Every now and then I wish I could talk to one or two people again. And to look back again. That's why I think it's such a shame that we don't go and say we'll get everyone involved around the table again and then we'll talk about it." Robert Hintereker, 3 years as a contact police officer in Hambach Forest

P.P.S.: "Hambi stays!": The forest was saved by a court ruling, but the story of this small forest is not yet over.

The topic of climate/sustainability not only plays a major role in terms of content. Exit Hambi is one of 48 projects across Germany to receive funding from the German Federal Cultural Foundation to enable climate-neutral production. Please support us, dear audience, in this endeavor by making your journey as climate-friendly as possible. Leave your car behind (there are hardly any parking spaces at the venue anyway), come on foot, take part in a guided bike tour to St. Anna Church or use the free public transport ticket included in the admission ticket! This gives you free travel on all VRR public transport (2nd class) in price level B, based on fare zone 36/Bochum.

Price information:

Students of the RUB, HSG, EvH RWL, HS BO and UW/H receive free tickets for our regular performances. This is an offer in cooperation with the respective AStAs.