Artist SaRa Sachs’ visual universe serves as the framework for the performance. Aqua Drama, in which stage art, video, and sculpture converge in a dystopian sci-fi scenario. In this world, water is a limited resource, and imagination becomes the last refuge. At the heart of the installation lies a video work filmed in the arid desert of Los Angeles, portraying a desiccated realm where peculiar characters engage in hallucinatory and imaginative narratives revolving around water and the yearning for a reality where it freely flows.
Within the video, the encounter between this parched parallel universe and our own reality is mediated by a mermaid—an archetype of water creatures, drawing from both Hollywood conventions and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Through camp aesthetics, The Little Mermaid, an iconic figure in Copenhagen, symbolizes a potential redemption through kitsch, desire, and the unavoidable future catastrophes, all set against a backdrop of pop music.
Inspired by the grandiose theater tradition of the Baroque era, where elaborate naval battles were staged to exalt the economic prosperity of the powerful, Aqua Drama unfolds as an ongoing opera. It explores water as a fluid symbol of authority in a world where all resources have dried up.
Aqua Drama is presented through Toaster, a collaboration between Huset Teater and Den Frie Udstillingsbygning in Copenhagen. Toaster is a platform for the intersection between theater, performance, and visual art, which initiates experimentation with artistic formats and audiences’ experiences and thereby contributes to performing art’s futuristic visions.
