# Look behind the mirror
Overall direction / development Katrin Sauter Musical direction / choral direction Franziska Welti Choreography Jürg Koch Body percussion performer Jean-Daniel Girod Set design Karin Bucher Assistant director Kristin Flückiger Assistant set designer Claudia Heiniger Lighting Taina Bucheli Production management Roger Lämmli
Clarinet Daniel Schneider Accordion Srdjan Vukašinović
Participating young people
Eloisa Agaj, Ilhan Alija, Muhamed Avdo, Alexandra Barreira, Marko Celikovic, Luis Da Silva, Lucca da Silva Marcato, Beverly De Los Santos-Aracena, Marie Grahle, Semira Haylom, Rim Ignou, Türker Kara, Damir Keric, Naveed Kumar, Yara Landau, Aleksandra Milovanovic, Zuhal Murad, Amra Naranbat, Athanasios Natsiopoulos, Ilaria Nicefaro, Francesco Perrotta, Patricia Pievani, Céline Puntero, Bettina-Thays Dumit Nazario, Daniela Tiekoua, Vanessa Togni, Alejandro Wismer
Class teachers Lucas Becker, Reto Geleijns, Caroline Rey
Good to know
# Look behind the mirror
Abstract
# Look behind the mirror
The Opernhaus Zürich’s Hashtag Projects have been an important and well-respected part of our musical outreach program for years. They are our most intensive means of bringing young people into contact with musical theater. Experienced artists bring their knowledge to the table, and, over the course of a year, develop a piece with pupils. What they produce is brought to life on the Studiobühne, with music, song, acting, movement, and dance.
This season, 150 years after Lewis Carroll’s book Alice Through the Looking-Glass was published, participants will revisit this story as they create with their own texts and ideas. The book invites them to engage with dreams and reality in a fun and playful way, to examine concepts and their intrinsic ambiguity, and to draw comical conclusions from them. The story’s absurdities put supposed truths to the test.
All of which means this literary classic is the perfect material for our newest Hashtag Project, as we live in a time in which everything seems to be questioned and the truth of a statement is not easy to discern. Everything is relative, everything is negotiable. We are constantly asked for our opinions. It’s easy to get lost among the arbitrariness of personal statements, «pseudo facts», and «fake news». Certainties have been replaced by uncertainties and vague notions of reality. What can we still hold on to? What standards apply, and who defines them? With what legitimacy? We want to go through the looking glass: what do we see when we look at something? Who do I see when I look in the mirror? Is there more than just what I see? Am I what I pretend to be? Inspired by these intellectual exercises, young people are encouraged to question social norms and confront their own reflections.
