half past selber schuld (IL/DE/US)

Following “Kafka in Wonderland”, half past selber schuld present their first English-language stage comic and the second part of their trilogy “Wonderland Inc”. “The Last Mortal” deals with man’s eternal struggle against disease and death. The mega-corporation Wonderland Inc. is further engaged in improving man by technological means. Racism is combated with skin colour filtering, while tiny nano-robots battle disease in the body while stumbling over fundamental philosophical questions.

“The Last Mortal” is a collection of situations that uses music, puppetry, character play, films, and dance and shadow scenes to traverse various stages of this fictional future, depicting its radical upheavals while expressing the drama of a transitional generation. The path of the mortal, organic human to the immortal, artificial hybrid is traced. Inspired by thoughts and prognoses of transhumanist thinkers like Ray Kurzweil and other visionaries, half past selbst schuld satirically exaggerates the actual technological state of our world. In the process, hopeful images and disturbing scenarios are created that are intended to represent the entire spectrum of this progress and, in addition to the tremendous new possibilities, also reveal its contradictions.

The German-Israeli artist duo, consisting of Ilanit Magarshak-Riegg and Sir ladybug beetle, became known through their elaborate music productions, animated films and especially stage comics. At the Stadttheater Fürth, the last part of the “Wonderland Inc.” trilogy, “What Robots Need to Learn,” is also running in the festival programme.