A hexagonal mirror stands in the middle of the room.
Every angle is reflected.
Fog is wafting over the stage and two people are lying on the floor, gasping.
A voice off yells "Armageddon".
With this doomsday scenario, the Jena Theater heralds its first premiere play of this season, which bears the title "Making Plans" and is intended to tell of future utopias and dystopias.
A courageous undertaking that the theater collective "Hashtagmonike", consisting of the actresses Henrike Commichau and Mona Vojacek Koper, dares to undertake in times of multiple crises.
"War, climate, energy," it says from the speakers.
The evening at the theater wants to create hope, with utopias that are hardly conceivable due to such a seemingly hopeless diagnosis of the times, and find solutions for "a better world".
Kevin Hanschke
volunteer.
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"It's good that humans have this incredible ability to repress," says Commichau.
"That helps in many ways." And so irony is the anchor point in this chamber play.
It starts with using anglicisms all the time, subtly mocking the language of the Fridays for Future generation: "Nice, amazing, bringing our own bags to the supermarket".
In the background are flat screens showing the Maldives or the ruins of the Oracle at Delphi.
Neon tubes as a machine gun
In the course of the evening, the two actresses stroll through the world of utopias in a spirit of dialogue.
In their mint green and light blue suits, they mimic robots and human-machine creatures, only to come to the conclusion that they "are not in the mood for artificial intelligence and controllability".
Then Florian Schaumberger's stage design is transformed into a discotheque, which, with its neon tubes, takes on the shape of a machine gun.
Various present-day phenomena are taken up: the trend towards precautionary measures in order to be prepared for the impending end times.
And if that doesn't help either, it may only be the visionaries who can save humanity.
The two actresses condescendingly interview one of them: Mark wants to build a city in the desert, but it quickly turns out that the architectural vision is far less sustainable than it first appears, and their visionary, a half-hearted Elon Musk hybrid, others has plans for himself.
"We build the bunker so beautifully that we no longer have to think about our friends if they stay on the sinking earth," says Koper with a stern look.
The vision of the city in the desert, which will be "human and walkable" with its parks, e-cars and wooden houses,
only serve capitalism.
A mood of doom comes up again.
But soon Mona Vojacek Koper leaves the dystopian scenario behind.
Overwhelmed by the idea that humans will probably not experience climate change themselves, but the earth will, she kisses the ground and exclaims: "My earth!"
Criticism of one's own morally left-wing generation is more caustic: "Why do Antifa and the eco-movement still read Marx like they did sixty years ago, it's like a bad re-enactment," Koper exclaims and Commichau asks: "Where are the real hippies?" Later she dreams However, it does have its own cooking island in the “affordable and bright” old building, with a garden in the middle of the city, “where happy people cook Ottolenghi recipes and philosophize”.
And then again there is only a reference to dystopian stories of the past, to "28 Days Later" or "The Day After Tomorrow".
The catastrophe has not yet happened, but it is getting closer – that is the tenor of the piece.
At the end, fireworks are projected onto a wall.
The actresses talk about a Disney plus documentary about the Beatles.
It pops and smells like gunpowder.
Once again, the two look devoutly into the sky: "Maybe we're smaller than we think," they say at the end forgivingly.
A little too forgiving maybe.
The only salvation from the great crises of our time seems to be to retreat into private Biedermeier.
So into the wrongest life in the wrong.
One would love to counter this flimsy ending with the clattering battle cry of the hip-hop band KIZ - "Hooray, this world is ending".