Ship of Fools – a play commissioned by Gothenburg City Theatre; premiere April 26th 2019
A tragicomic dystopia about the fall of the world as a live staged audio-play by Carina Reich and Bogdan Szyber.
In a sound studio, five foley artists * stage everything from ecological collapse, the planet’s destruction, the physiology of democracy to Hans Rosling’s Messianism. They start from the fable of “The ship of Fools”, Plato’s tale of an an incompetent, drunk and dumbfounded captain and a crew of panicked buffoons who drift towards their destruction.
A pre-recorded Narrator reads the text. The sounds are created with, among a myriad of other props, old-fashioned wind machines, celery and cellophane. Memories of war and extinction as well as dairy anxiety and rap-battles between saints are recounted in 4-channel stereo sound.
Written by Bogdan Szyber Direction, scenography & costumes Carina Reich & Bogdan Szyber Performed by Johan Karlberg, Victoria Olmarker, Jesper Söderblom, Hannah Alem Davidson & Marie Delleskog (The Narrator) Light design Ronald Salas Sound design & music Tommy Carlsson Make-up Katrin Lind Dramaturgy Joel Nordström