Next level Parzival By Tim Staffel

Discussions between the audience and the participants of the play will be held after the performance of September 24

In Swiss German with Standard German supertitles

The admission ticket serves as well as a free entry to the room installation Teatrum Mundi.

Seven young people meet for a LAN party. They want to play ARTUS. Hardly have they linked up their computers and projected themselves into their characters in the game when a virus turns up. It is called Parzival and - just like the figure from the Middle Ages has no idea about the prevailing rules. Then, he unsettled the world of the knights, today he unsettles the well sorted virtual reality of the gamers. His proceeding is brutal, but naive. He reacts reflex-like to new impressons and pieces of information, he murders and rapes without being aware what he is doing. He is not prepared for an encounter with today’s world. He is lacking “experience values”. Being a newcomer to this world he cannot estimate the aftermath of his actions neither for him nor for others.
The Parzival in the verse novel of Wolfgang von Eschenbach finds his way out of uncertainty to the king of the grail. In Tim Staffel’s work as well, Parzival changes. He senses that there must be something else behind the figures that surround him. But as long as he does not know that there exists something different outside the world of the computer game ARTUS he cannot pose himself the question whether this world is the right one for him. For real gamers however, there is no question to pose neither. They have chosen. They are able to gain fame and glory in the game. There, they know how it works. At all hours, they might download their score and see what they are worth. The adrenalin kick is part of the game – but is predictable as well. Only when Parcival’s actions suddenly show its effects in the real world, the rules that seemed to be sure dissolve in all levels.
The Middle High German text by Wolfram von Eschenbach would be hardly comprehensible to many spectators as well as the language the computer gamers use. By chosing actors of the young theatre Basel who are talking Swiss German the audience has the opportunity to experience both language registers which are at the same time still understandable.

The performance is accompanied by the RUHRFUTUR-events – a programme for the young audience aged 16 to 26.