Tremens

William Shakespeare’s tragedy about the ancient Greek misanthrope Timon of Athens provides the thematic starting point for «Tremens», an immersive experience that combines theatre and Virtual Reality. Here the award-winning Belgian artistic collective CREW asks a key question: is avoiding human contact really the last resort in a world where people can be reduced to data points?

In the Residenztheater foyer reality merges with digital illusion. The audience immerses itself in flowing, aesthetically fascinating architectures, encounters interactive avatars and loses itself in constantly morphing spaces. The boundaries between physical experience and virtual presence merge – an immersive state that serves not escapism but conscious engagement with an increasingly digitised present.

For several years the collective CREW has been active in combining theatre with new media and using them to explore the relationships between the body, space and digital identity. In «Tremens» the virtual space becomes a stage for social questions: what will remain of human beings when they are mirrored, selected and rated by algorithms? Who are we in a world where everything can be saved, manipulated and reconstructed?

After over eighteen months intensive development in Munich and Brussels, CREW will present itself for the first time at the Residenztheater with «Tremens» – in a remarkable performance that breaks out from classical theatre forms and opens up space for new experiences. Those watching are not just an audience but also part of a variable system that changes with every movement, every glance, every decision.  

«Tremens» invites you to question familiar patterns of thought – and to use Virtual Reality goggles to experience the Residenztheater foyer as a space in which the overwhelming convergence of theatrical assertion and virtual boundlessness opens new perspectives on the present.