“2
…and I looked out of the window on my right and I saw trees in the sun, all colours brown and empty, I saw those tiny houses people rent to have the illusion of owning a garden, and I saw a small creek, and we were approaching the city—
1
Are you done?
2
You don’t… I wanted the train never to stop. I didn’t want to arrive.
1
If you never stop on your trip around the world, you’ll end up where you’ve started.
2
Are you done?”
When July gets Cody‘s text, she knows their relationship is about to hit a wall. Deeply upset, but too tough to admit it, she tries to figure out how to change the world and joins the occupy movement, much against the advice of her best friend Helen. Neil, at the other end of town, has different problems. Having returned from his father‘s funeral and just as he is helping his sister, Sam, off to New York, he gets an assignment to write a PR proposal, which might really change the world. Apparently, subatomic particles, travelling faster than the speed of light, will make trading much quicker and easier. All Neil has to do is find the human angle in a system which is doing its best to make humans obsolete. However, he needs to figure out a solution, before the voice in the back of his head drives him insane.
Meanwhile, the ninety-nine per cent protest and there is a shop in town that runs out of milk.
A World Without is set in a world in which we have forgotten how to trust each other. It is a modern world of social media that make us believe that we are endlessly close too each other, media that convince us that we only have to click to know everything there is to know about everyone. However, we click and click and click and we realise that every click only produces noise and detachment. At the same time, it is a wonderful modern world in which we can stay close to each other, connect to each other, even if we are hundreds of miles apart.
It is a crazy, contradictory modern world. That is what A World Without is about: This question of how we can navigate through this world. And of how we can improve it. How we can overcome our own disillusionment, how we can work against social injustice and how we can find a place in this crazy world.
A World Without is a play for 13 actors (3 female, 3 male, 7 can be either).
The play was first performed in 2015 in the Theater Lebermatt in Bern, Switzerland, produced by the Caretakers.