MagicDrinks is a mobile, site-specific performance that brings theatre right into the festival grounds: an old bus as the stage, no barrier between stage and audience — whoever takes a drink is already part of the play.
The Production
What has brought people together for centuries? Not the theatre. But the pub, the tavern, the bar. Places where you don’t have to show ID, where nobody asks whether you belong, where encounters simply happen. A festival is exactly such a place — and yet, amid the noise, the pace and the crowd, real encounters often get lost.
MagicDrinks grew out of this observation — and out of the frustration that theatre is often the opposite: a closed-off space with a threshold, a ticket, a dress code, a cultural code. A place for those who already know it.
We wanted a theatre without that threshold. So we swapped the stage for an old bus. A bus doesn’t park elitist — a bus sparks curiosity. MagicDrinks is a mobile, site-specific performance that brings theatre right into the festival grounds. Our stage is not a hall, not an art space — but an old bus that appears between stages, stalls and streams of people. There is no barrier between stage and audience, no ticket counter, no code. Passing by turns into stopping, a conversation becomes an invitation to experience the piece. Whoever takes a drink is already part of the play. Whoever sits down on one of the seating islands has the best seat. Whoever just stops to see what’s going on here — ends up in a conversation.
The most intimate connection between stage and guest happens over the telephone: performers take individual visitors aside, hand them a receiver, speak, listen, respond — a private moment in the midst of the festival bustle. Light, multi-channel sound, video mapping and the performers’ voices create an atmosphere between vintage and science fiction. The piece has no classical beginning or end — it is an open window of time in which strangers at a festival briefly become a community.