Heat Lightning

A Rehearsal in Five Acts


"This quiet. A theater space like this is actually totally quiet. Totally chill.”

Who actually makes the magic moments in theater?

Stage technicians, fitters, lighting technicians, sound departments and many others make it rain on stage, light things that are not theater and show us locations that we dream of.

In doing so, theater workers mostly wear black so that we don’t see them when they flit across the stage. In HEAT LIGHTNING, we bring the voices from backstage into the spotlight.

Is making the weather a nine to five job? What is a prompter and how fast is a revolving stage? The video takes us into the costume storage area, the sun will rise and set again, it will snow and a joke will be told!

Photo: Kornelia Kugler

DIRECTION Simone Dede Ayivi
SCENOGRAPHY Lani Tran-Duc
SOUND DESIGN AND MUSIC Johannes Birlinger
VIDEO
Kornelia Kugler, Tina Wilke
DRAMATURGY Raban Witt
ASSISTANT DIRECTION AND DRAMATURGY ASSOCIATE Selma Böhmelmann 

And the entire staff of Theater Oberhausen.

The world premiere was on April 8, 2022 at Theater Oberhausen.
Additional performances in 2022 at Theater Oberhausen