YOU MIGHT THINK, WHAT'S THAT NOISE, AND I'LL TELL YOU, IT'S THE WASHING MACHINE

"Our certainties must not become rigid... The ground beneath our feet can and should rise." Robert Walser

A village or a small town with a charmingly familiar facade, complete with a town hall, post office, and bakery. The residents go about their routines, their sphere of activity is defined, their conversations are practical. In the evenings, they meet for choir practice.

Behind the scenes lies the internal, the abstract, the not-easily-accessible: waves of sounds and colors intertwined and overlapping, represented by the sound of a string quartet and a jazz trio. Utilitarian music flirts with the freedom of improvisation, while contemporary sounds curiously peek at the clarity of yodeling. To hear one within the other, and to linger in uncertainty, becomes a joyful experience.

As the evening progresses, the facade begins to crumble. The villagers are still the same people, but they become increasingly perplexing. A picture of humanity emerges in an increasingly fragile society, where the effort to disguise oneself in order to "hold one's offices" is immense. Scars are hardly worn with pride. But couldn't precisely this be groundbreaking?

The Swiss composer and director Ruedi Häusermann creates multi-layered musical theatre works and now returns to the Schauspielhaus Zürich with a new production and hand-picked musicians.