Frankfurt Lab

“See You Soon” explores the future of theater – and the question of who is actually allowed to shape that future. Rather than leaving this question to cultural-policy debates, the installation brings together the voices of people with very different experiences and relationships to theater. It views the future not as a vision held by a few, but as a process of negotiation involving many perspectives.

Visitors can experience the results of two artistic creative processes:

In the first part, an installation gives voice to a multitude of people of different ages and from diverse life circumstances. Through workshops held in settings such as a school or a long-term care facility – which facilitated a playful exchange – they were invited to address the theater of the future in letters. The letters explore the conditions of an institution in transition: What does theater need to remain a socially relevant space in the future? What do the people who work there need? Which structures must change, and which qualities must be preserved? Amid these fundamental questions, personal wishes and surprisingly concrete ideas also find their place – ranging all the way to armchairs and a popcorn machine. In an audio collage, these letters coalesce into a polyphonic chorus of longings, criticism, and visions for the future.

The second part of the installation stems from the participatory exhibition “[T]RaumTheater,” which took place in March 2026 at the NAXOS production house. There, theater and cultural professionals were invited to reflect together on the present and future of theater. A film documentary, video messages from visitors, and collages draw on the perspectives gathered there.

An open collage table invites festival visitors to develop their own images and visions of a future theater and to enrich the installation with additional voices. Thus, “See You Soon” is not intended as a definitive answer to the question of the future of theater, but rather as an invitation to continue exploring it together.

The installation was created as part of the performance research project “Socio-Ecological Transformation of the City Theater: Letters to the Future of an Institution of Civic Public Sphere,” which took place during the winter semester of 2025/26 at the Institute for Theater, Film, and Media Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. The seminar was led by the artist duo deufert&plischke and supervised by Nikolaus Müller-Schöll.