Sabrina Zwach

Imagine an island of flowers, beautiful and peaceful, where all the inhabitants are poets. Too good to be true, and so it is in Raimund's magic play Die gefesselte Phantasie, which premiered at the 'Theater in der Leopoldstadt' in Vienna in 1828. Two evil sorceress sisters come to disturb the beautiful peace. According to an oracle, in order to drive them away, the queen of the island must marry a partner who is worthy of her. The queen, on the other hand, has a mind of her own and has furthermore sworn to marry only a poet. When she tries to resolve the conflict with the evil sorceress sisters amicably, they devastate the island and all the courtiers cowardly flee. The queen then announces that she will marry whoever writes her the most beautiful poem, whereupon the sorceress sisters capture the imagination so that no one can write another poem. From this point on, the grotesque-fantastic magic play takes its crazy course. "Operation a success, Raimund is alive!" (Die Presse)

The artistic director welcomes his new team: a carefully assembled group of experts tasked with finding the big issues for the theatre. Because big issues are discussed everywhere and all the time, except in the theatre. That is about to change. But first, the director is late and the big issues are not so easy to identify, even for the writer, who has no desire to write for actors anyway. Fortunately, a security expert and the equal opportunities officer are monitoring this delicate public art process so that any fire hazard and possible discrimination can be nipped in the bud. When the director finally shows up and the beautiful singer Rose enters the stage, the creative process initially accelerates, but jealousy, rivalry and ultimately a death shake the team to its core. But then a miracle happens and the experts dance and sing, because ‘gone is the idea of salvation through art and culture; from now on, we are ruled by the dictatorship of miracles.’
With Experts, Sabrina Zwach and Paula Fünfeck have written a comedy about the desperate search for meaning and discourse in contemporary theatre. In their first collaboration, both have devoted themselves with great enthusiasm to the task of encountering the complexity of life and art with humour and a willingness to embrace the grotesque.

The Peace of Westphalia is an impressive example of a long and warlike conflict not ending in violence, but with dialogue at the negotiating table. 2023 marks the 375th anniversary of this peace treaty. The artists' collective Chez Company is staging a public reflection on peace and peace negotiations. Together with actors, flâneurs and city actors, the collective will read and perform a text written by the authors as an act of civil negotiation and encounter in public space. (Announcement of the Theater Münster)