Commission to Ulrich Kreppein

A family – daughter, mother and father – moves to a new town – a town by the sea. While the daughter is looking for a connection to the previously unknown and falls into a mysterious clique that challenges her to ever more daring tests of diving courage, the father is looking for a new job in his old profession as a diving instructor, now finally by the sea. As a scientist in a new position at the company ATLANTIS, her mother is researching programmable matter: an AI that can make optimised living environments virtually tangible according to the customer’s personality anamnesis – the INDIVIDUWELT© in the meta-project AVALON©. It finds this in Melusin-E, a previously undiscovered, self-thinking element of the water molecule. A revolutionary breakthrough: H2O was yesterday, tomorrow is H2OM-E. The futuristic-realistic scenario changes from the entrance to ATLANTIS via the prologue to ten scenes between the company, the flat, the city and the sea, as the pressure on the characters increases. Reality is increasingly overlaid by virtual worlds, fears and fantasies. The Melusin-E acts as a catalyst for multiple crossings of reality. The climax of the plot is the – very real! – transformation of the daughter into a mermaid. In the epilogue, we meet the mother and father after their (too deep?) immersion in the Melusin-E. Reality becomes blurred. As a figure between real and imaginary, the Melusine throws us back ashore in the theatre space at the end of the immersion. Questions arise with her: What is real of what has taken place? Is there virtual? What does real mean?

Ulrich Kreppein is composing a new piece of music theatre for the Theater Vorpommern, supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Melusin-E takes place between the bleak world of high-rise housing estates, the manipulative brave new world of the AI company ATLANTIS, the harsh reality of the diving clique and the unreal world of water, to which the element Melusin-E opens up access. The musical worlds draw inspiration from these spaces and show their permeability. The intrusion of the unreal, the dissolution of the fixed contours of reality is the main task of the music, which oscillates between the dry, dusty, industrial sounds of reality and the floating, soft, melting soundscapes of water. Real-world sound files (field recordings) are included. Hard rhythmic material melts into hypnagogic dream music under the increasing influence of Melusin-E, psychedelic worlds of manipulative feel-good music in the AI company ATLANTIS contrasts with the real depths of inner-world experiences in the sounds of water.

Further information:
theater-vorpommern.de

Dates

November 20, 2025
Theater Vorpommern, Stralsund

January 15, 2026
Stadthalle Greifswald

March 13, 2026
Theater Putbus