Beautiful and yet tricky at this festival "Politics in Independent Theater": FOMO is becoming extremely important.

"Fear of missing out", remember?

This was the hot thing before the pandemic.

The fear of missing something, particularly widespread in club culture and culture culture.

Anyone who has wondered how to squeeze nine to twelve evenings of programming into a single week has at least been able to take a breather and calm down during the lockdowns.

But the virus barely dies down - or have we decided to simply ignore it from now on?

– it starts again.

In the art and culture scene, everyone is talking about exhaustion again.

But everyone keeps going.

Strings together premieres, exhibitions, showings, debates.

It doesn't matter if more people come or less.

The ranks are filling up, possibly also thanks to the many inexpensive or even free student tickets.

Photo shoot with Adorno

And the students themselves?

Have turned their own Westend campus into a festival location in Frankfurt.

For a single day, all the performances, interventions and installations by the theater scholars that guest lecturer Diego Rotman developed with the students could be seen.

A white plush "Teddie" on a desk in the foyer invites you to a friendly photo shoot with Adorno, while the real Adorno monument in the campus park already looks badly battered.

Hoodies from “Teddie Wiesengrund Adorno University” can be bought in the shop, and a giant rat in the foyer of the Poelzig building is a reminder of the dark history of the place.

For one day, as a dinghy from “Politics in the Free Theater” like many other dinghies.

Only outside the door, at the site fence, which has been standing in front of the facade of the Poelzig building for what feels like an eternity, will the university visitors probably see a change after the festival day.

Hundreds of names of those who had to do forced labor in Auschwitz III Monowitz and were then murdered.

Sprayed onto the site fence by the festival visitors with graffiti spray, a memento.

The students are now asking the Presidency to allow the fence to remain in place for two weeks longer.

To enable remembering.

And one would like to add: also for a moment of pausing.