FELIX'S ROOM

"You could say: high-end playfulness. But it can do much more than a normal stage set or a video, which in the best moments becomes a phenomenology of perception: The music coagulates into a flickering, the oboe blows a disparate melody, the colours disappear from the scans, the performance becomes a ghostly symbol of memory, shadow, chimera, whatever pops into your head when you try to remember. In these moments, 'Felix's Room' is an absolute masterpiece, technically astounding"

Süddeutsche Zeitung

A chest of drawers and a sketched floor plan are all that survives of the single room in a so-called "Jewish House" in the Kaiserstraße in Mainz. Felix Ganz and his wife Erna were confined there for a year after they were evicted from his mansion overlooking the Rhine. His life as an international businessman is over, his home has been stolen, his children have escaped. Now his engagement with the world is limited to letters, the sounds of neighbours and his view of the Gestapo Headquarters across the street.

"The production is a kind of requiem, a musical journey into virtual reality."

Tagesspiegel

ScanLAB collaborated with the Komische Oper Berlin, the Berliner Ensemble, and Adam Ganz to devise new digital narrative forms at the intersection of theatre, music, and technical innovation which use projected holographic effects and sets built using high-resolution 3D scans to transport the audience into the life of Felix Ganz.

Sometimes the virtual world resurrected around Felix and Erna represents the realities of their prison, a skeletal room that shudders barely offering protection from the bombs that fall nearby and the Gestapo footsteps that pass by in the hallway. At other moments these walls disintegrate as joyous memories of freedoms once known transport us to carpet workshops and the vaulted ceilings of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, or to the dances in the grandiose ballroom at Felix’s former house on the Michelsberg, a building now occupied by the Nazis.

"As touching as it is oppressive!"

BZ

"Felix's Room" is a co-production of Komische Oper Berlin and Berliner Ensemble in cooperation with ScanLAB Projects.

The co-production "Felix's Room" is part of the cooperation project "Spielräume!", funded by the Kultur Digital program of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

The production is supported by the international theatre company Complicité and StoryFutures, the National Centre for Immersive Storytelling in Great Britain.

Credits:

Felix - Veit Schubert

Erna - Alma Sadé

Olga - Julia Domke

Younger Adam - Johannes Dunz

Adam - Adam Ganz

Concept/Direction - Adam Ganz & ScanLAB Projects

Writer - Adam Ganz

Creative Director - Matt Shaw (ScanLAB Projects)

Executive Producer & Associate Director - meriko borogove (ScanLAB Projects)

Associate Director - James Yeatman

Associate Director - Max Lindemann (Berliner Ensemble)

Creative Producer - Anetta Jones (ScanLAB Projects)

Lead Visual Artist - James White (ScanLAB Projects)

Composer / Conductor - Christoph Breidler (Komische Oper Berlin)

Composer - Tonia Ko (Supported by StoryFutures)

Sound Designer - Benjamin Grant

Costume & Stage Assistant - Noemi Baumblatt (Berliner Ensemble)

Head of Lighting - Hans Fründt (Berliner Ensemble)

Dramaturg - Karolin Trachte (Berliner Ensemble)

Dramaturg - Julia Jordà Stoppelhaar (Komische Oper Berlin)

Visual Artist - Nicky Ovidiu Baiculescu (ScanLAB Projects)

Project Lead - Sabrina Schmidt (Berliner Ensemble)

Project Lead - René Kalauch (Komische Oper Berlin)

Production Assistant - Lara Yilmaz

Vocal Coach - Peggy Marmuth (Komische Oper Berlin)

Showrunner & Stage Manager - Kristina Seebruch (Berliner Ensemble)

Technical Production Management - Fabian Menzel (Berliner Ensemble)

Consultant Producer - Tim Bell (Complicité)

Production Manager - Emilia Clark (ScanLAB Projects)

Archive courtesy of:

Adam Ganz & the Ganz Family

Sandra Lipner & the Dyllick-Brenzinger Family

Orchestra

Oboe - Tjadina Wake-Walker, Ryoichi Masaka

Clarinet - Alexander Glücksmann, Tilo Morgner

Bass Trombone - Carsten Meyer, Daniel Holthaus

First Violin - Stefan Adam, Freia Schubert

Second Violin - Melinda Watzel, Volker Friedrich

Viola - Anton Loginov, Julia Lindner de Azevedo Conte

Cello - Felix Nickel, Christian Tränkner

Double Bass - Jörg Lorenz, Frank Lässig

Piano - Christoph Breidler

Can be heard in sound recordings - Nina Bruns, Jonathan Kempf, Peter Moltzen, Tilo Nest (Berliner Ensemble)

As well as - Fina Bockemühl and Johannes Voermans (Childrens’ choir of the Komische Oper Berlin)

Thanks to:

The Ganz Family

Ulla Maibaum

Natalie Neumann

Sandra Lipner

Simon McBurney (Complicité)

Amber Massie-Blomfield (Complicité)

James Bennett (StoryFutures)

Dr Birgit Heide (Landesmuseum)

Gernot Frankhauser (Landesmuseum)

Sarah Smyth (StoryFutures)

Amanda Murphy (StoryFutures)

Sarah Brown (StoryFutures)

Bryce Lease (Central School of Speech & Drama)

Tamzin Griffin

Krista Vuori

Taryn Surratt

Wai Sum Leung

Maisie Stewart

Ollie McLellan

Will Trossell

Ilan Pdahtzur

School of Performing and Digital Arts at Royal Holloway University of London

Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverlüste