THE ARRIVAL

Theater Münster, 2021

What moves a person to take a step into the unknown? To leave everything familiar behind? To embark on a journey to a new place where everything is nameless and the future is uncertain? Inspired by the graphic novel THE ARRIVAL by Australian author and illustrator Shaun Tan, director Ksenia Ravvina, together with the ensemble of the Young Theater Münster, explores the process of change and transformation. Every person is confronted with profound changes in life. In these so-called crises or transformation processes, a person finds themselves in a situation where they can no longer act in the old way and not yet in the new way. The entire chronological development of life is called into question, dividing life into a before and an after. With a multimedia performance, the team delves into the emotional world of departures, as well as life and identity changes, inviting the audience on an expedition into terra incognita.

Director Ksenia Ravvina does not limit herself to visual quotes from Tan’s book… [in this work]  

In a phenomenal montage, the original material is virtually recreated, projected, sampled, looped, chopped up, with the two performers appearing as a dozenfold ghosts.  

As a mass of dancing dots hovers above a static, filtered synthesizer chord, this not only symbolizes the isolation within the crowd, but also draws a cosmic bridge to Stanley Kubrick's *2001: A Space Odyssey*. Every person: a migrant.  

The boundaries between film and stage art are fluid here. [It] creates impressive experimental cinema that continuously questions the notion of perspective until the very end.  

Wolfgang Müller, Münstersche Zeitung, May 9, 2021

Documentation of THE ARRIVAL at Theater Münster in 2021

Premiered at Theater Münster in May 2021

Directed by Ksenia Ravvina
Video and Set Design Warped Type
Music and Sound Design Alexandar Hadjiev
Dramaturg Monika Marta Kosik
Theatre Pedagogy Lina Lewejohann
Cast Eva Dorlaß, Valentin Shroeteler

Produced by Theater Münster