Engel der Vernichtung

Four actors are waiting in a film set for the start of their next shoot. A remake of her big box office success "Ghosts" is to be made. But the film crew just doesn't show up. After failed attempts to contact the management and take the shoot into their own hands, the players realize that they can no longer leave the place. An invisible border seems to enclose them on the set. Thrown back on themselves, they are confronted with the imperfection of human existence: old age, missed love affairs, envy, illness and mortality become visible as if under a magnifying glass. The four actors ask themselves what would be waiting for them outside. Because AI is about to conquer the world and doesn't seem to stop at the gates of Hollywood. Digital doubles, algorithmic rejuvenation and the revival of deceased cinema greats will change the future of acting and storytelling.

Against the backdrop of this contemporary phenomenon, "Angel of Annihilation" appropriates the plot of Luis Buñuel's surrealist film classic "The Strangling Angel" (1962) for the stage. With "Angel of Annihilation", director Jonas Bernetta and his team address the fear of the loss of meaning and subjectivity when everything that makes up a human being is replaced by an AI. For example, what is the acting work of people still worth if digital doubles can portray every laugh more perfectly, every suffering more credibly than they can? Accompanied throughout by a live camera, the theatre stage becomes a film set, the performance a live film.