And the Stars Will Be up Tonight

Yellow diamonds in the sky
Now we are standing side by side
As your shadow crosses mine
What it takes to come alive
We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place
We found love in a hopeless place
Rihanna

In times of social or personal crisis, the status quo is at stake. Something has begun to falter, has cracked, can no longer hold up. The process of change sets in and holds an intermediate space in which the old form is lost and the new one has not yet been achieved, a moment in which everything has to find itself anew and put itself in order, a moment of the greatest uncertainty.

Starting with the question of whether this state also holds redeeming and hope-giving potential, actor Mervan Ürkmez embarks on a research journey. He interviews experts from various disciplines and combines theoretical research with practical experience. In rhythmic gymnastics, he finds a visible metaphor, a physical image of the unsettling transition: with the help of sport, bodies seem to grow beyond themselves, transform moments of supreme effort into magic, lose their form or take on a new one. And before the competition, in which you have to survive under critical eyes, you have to overcome the threshold of excitement. Mervan Ürkmez has started training himself and developed a choreography.

After the performance, Mervan Ürkmez, Julian Warner and Hannah Saar will talk about the potential of gymnastics, the performance of gender and autoethnographic research in the theater.