Depth Immersion Theatre - The Breaking of Heaven

BERLIN 2023

MFA Thesis Project

The Breaking of Heaven is a Depth Immersion Theatre experience where audiences step inside the forbidden world of Georg Rheticus, the man who dared to publish Copernicus's revolutionary theory. Moving freely through a transformed space that blends medieval and contemporary, sacred and profane, viewers witness how personal repression and cosmic revolution intertwine. This fully immersive performance dissolves the boundary between story and space - you don't watch the myth, you walk through it.

This piece represents my first full exploration of Depth Immersion Theatre (DIT), a form I'm developing that combines immersive environment, archetypal storytelling, and embodied experience to create transformative theatrical encounters. Like stepping into a living dream, DIT places audiences inside the psychological and mythic dimensions of the story itself.

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The following documentation details the original MFA thesis project as presented at arthaus.berlin. During my studies, I became interested in the potential of immersive theatre through the work of Punchdrunk in London. I devised this project as an experimental application of some of their techniques in which I give the audience agency to delve into the experience in whatever way they choose.

Rater than starting from dramatic texts, I chose as source material the life of mathematician and astronomer Georg Joachim Rheticus. The events of his life in the early sixteenth century bring together the Copernican Revolution, themes of religion, queerness, madness and superstition, and the emergence of modern science. I did not aim to tell this as a linear narrative; instead my goal was to assemble light, objects, movement and sound into an immersive space which would become the shifting idea-space of Western thought at the dawn of the modern era.

Performers: Geoffrey Schön and Li Zelin.

Performance devised in collaboration with Li Zelin and Maria Yasinover. Immersive space designed in collaboration with Sophia Lanza-Weil. Presented as part of the Arthaus Berlin Festival 2023.