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Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel Studio Julian Hetzel
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Game Over

Game Over

Game Over is an invitation to play.
Game Over is a project about empathy and the gamification of violence. In Game Over the audience is invited to step in and to take the control in their hands. How far are you willing to go?

The participatory installation Game Over explores the ambivalences of global drone warfare. The distinction between perpetrators and accomplices, spectators and eyewitnesses, cowards and heroes becomes as blurred as the line between fiction and reality.

Game Over brings a complex and highly topical theme to the stage, to create awareness and a space for dialogue and reflection on the big questions of war and peace.

At the core of Game Over is the reconstruction of the military experience of gamified killing. As witnesses both on screen and in real life, the audience uncovers analogies between drone warfare and Ego-shooter games. This project encourages the audience to recognize their own responsibility for their actions and decisions and offers insights into the psychology of the perpetrators.

“If perpetrators are normal people like you and me, that also means that you and I can also become perpetrators.”
– Harald Welzer, social psychologist

Game Over combines art and war, computer games and theater, to create empathy through an artistic-social experiment in which you decide how far you can go.

"Exciting, inspiring and moving. Great direction (…) A project that invites you to participate. The acting performance “Game Over” at the Tif Kassel combines computer games with bitter reality."
- Andreas Köthe in HNA Read more

PRACTICAL
You can visit Game Over at Staatstheater Kassel from 8 – 16 May from 17:00 – 21:00 (closed on Sunday 12 May).
Book your timeslot

CONTEXT PROGRAMME
Daily, 9:00 PM – 10:00 PM
(except Sunday, May 12th)

Each day, after the performance we invite the audience to join us for a a context programme focussing on dialogue and reflection, framing and accompanying the project discursively. Together with peace researchers, philosophers, and authors, the programme aims to stimulate exchange.

Concept & Director: Julian Hetzel
Performer: Marius Bistritzky, Judith Florence Ehrhardt, Laure Fleitz, Niek Vanoosterweyck, Christina Weiser
Dramaturgy: Miguel Angel Melgares
Dramaturgy Staatstheater Kassel: Elias Lepper
Machine Artist: Hannes Waldschütz
Technical coordinator: Aengus Havinga
Production coordinator: Franziska Niehaus (Staatstheater Kassel), Marieke van den Bosch, Jitske Weijand (Studio Julian Hetzel)

Game Over is an adaptation of the award-winning performance The Automated Sniper (Impulse Theater Festival 2018, VSCD Mime Award 2017) and was developed in collaboration with Het Hem and We Are Public in 2021.