Angela (a strange loop)

In the last few years, the entire world underwent an intense experience of vulnerability and transience. Now, post-pandemic society is struggling to reassess its relationship with sickness and death. With the multimedia theatre production “Angela (a strange loop)”, Susanne Kennedy and Markus Selg investigate whether the collectively experienced sense of danger holds the potential for a new form of humanism.

The play follows the main character from birth to a collective elegy. This close-up of a woman’s life serves as the foil for a critical-poetic analysis of how society deals with sickness and death. Viewed through the lens of an ill person, the production poses the existential question of how a community can cope with the very personal experience of dying. How do we take care of each other when life comes to an end?

Kennedy and Selg have collaborated on numerous productions for years. And like their past works, “Angela (a strange loop)” interweaves traditional scenic and technical artistic methods and probes the boundaries between theatre and digital installation art. Applying virtual reality and artificial intelligence, they create a total artwork consisting of theatre, sound, video, text, dance and performance elements which supplants the traditional concept of authorship and the idea of the genius artist by a new form of collective diversity.

The play is the first that Kennedy and Self are producing through their newly established performing arts platform “Ultraworld Production”. As an institution situated between municipal theatre and the independent scene, it serves as an artistic-technical research lab for interdisciplinary artists.

Concept, text and direction: Susanne Kennedy
Concept and stage design: Markus Selg
Performance: Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández, Kate Strong, Tarren Johnson, Dominic Santia
Voices: Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Cathal Sheerin, Kate Strong, Rita Kahn Chen, Rubina Schuth, Tarren Johnson, Susanne Kennedy, Ethan Braun, Dominic Santia, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández, Marie Schleef, Ruth Rosenfeld

World premiere and guest performances: Kunstenfestivaldesarts / Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, Brussels: 11–13 May 2023; Austrian premiere and guest performances: Wiener Festwochen / Halle G, Vienna: 28 May – 1 Jun. 2023; Dutch premiere and guest performances: Holland Festival, Amsterdam: 22–25 Jun. 2023; German premiere and guest performances: Theater der Welt 2023, Frankfurt am Main-Offenbach / Schauspiel Frankfurt, Frankfurt: 30 Jun. – 2 Jul. 2023; French premiere and guest performances: Festival d’Avignon, Avignon: 10–20 Jul. 2023; Festival D’Automne, Paris: autumn 2023 (dates t.b.a.); Italian premiere and guest performances: Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, Modena: winter 2024 (dates t.b.a.)