Plays & Performances

Since 1999, MASS & FIEBER has produced eight plays plus various open air performances and musical evenings. Their work is made possible by the generous support coming from various Swiss cultural institutes, private sponsors and foundations. Shows are usually produced in Zürich and then go on tour. Their work has also been commissioned by two World Exhibitions and the steirischer herbst festival in Graz.

Bambifikation (1999), a theatrical Rock-Show for two musicians and one actress, was produced in Zürich and won instant acclaim as an underground cult event. Bambifikation then toured through Switzerland and Germany and won both the festival award and the audience award at the Impulse Theatre Festival in Germany, as well as the Förderpreis at the Bodensee Theatre Festival in Switzerland.

Präriepriester (2000), a pocket-sized Western-play featuring the group's first arrangement of original country songs, was produced in Hamburg and Zürich and toured in cities in Switzerland and Germany. Präriepriester was invited to the Festival Theaterformen in Hanover and provoked the interest of the steirischer herbst festival in Graz, which led to a spin-off of the production, The Dead Cowboys Radio Show, which was shown both in Graz and at the Expo in Hanover. A short VIDEO-IMPRESSION HERE.

Mass & Fieber's third music-theatre-event, Krazy Kat, opened in 2001 at the Theaterhaus Gessnerallee in Zürich and toured in, among other places, Bern, Basel, Berlin, Cologne and Hamburg. Both Bambifikation and Krazy Kat have been produced as radio plays by the Deutschland Radio.

In 2002, Mass & Fieber was invited by the Swiss Expo 02 to produce a play for the „Arteplage du Jura", a boat-installation that toured four lakes during the Exposition. The result was Red Cross Over, a show on Switzerland, Neutrality and the ICRC, which ended with the actors jumping into the lake - an instant crowd pleaser. The play got excellent reviews from the national newspapers as well as critical acclaim from various delegates and officials from the ICRC.

2002/2003 Mass & Fieber took part in the hotel-installation Bad Hotel as the occupants of the Villain-Room and with the performance "Sleepers" in the Ancestor's Room. Bad Hotel was conceived and coordinated by Mass & Fieber's Dirk Thiele and Brigitte Helbling and was one of the largest and certainly the most successful cooperation of musicians, actors and artists that Zürich has ever seen.

In the winter of 2003, Mass & Fieber produced Autodrom, a theatrical expedition into life with cars, which experimented with Händel and surround sounds and ended in the future; conceived for a large space, it was shown in Basel, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Cologne. A short VIDEO-IMPRESSION HERE.

In January 2005, the group opened with a play commissioned by the Basel City Theatre on the pharma industry. „King Placebo" covered the range, musically and otherwise, from the Basel death dance to the pharma-empire of the Queen of Saba who eventually performs a moving duet with King Placebo. However, disaster lurks in the wings.

In 2006, the group produced Houdini (the last liberation) in and with the rock’n’roll club and former vaudeville house Mascotte in Zürich. The show included real and mysterious magic tricks, Jack Bauer, mexican wrestling and enforced disappearances and played in many cities until the end of 2007. More english language material on the show can be downloaded here.

In 2008, The Black Chamber, a gothic opera on civil war, opened in Bern at the Schlachthaus Theatre. The ghost story about a young man in the clutches of three witches iwas shown at festivals and theatres in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. An english language Dossier on the show can be downloaded here. See the VIDEO-TRAILER FROM ART-TV.

In the summer of 2008, Mass & Fieber developed the performance The Garden of Animals for the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, "mad colonial teaparty", Safari booklet with riddles and croquet on the lawn included. The Museum of Natural History in Bern contributed a stuffed elefant, a flamingo, a komodowaran and several mounted exotic horns. The performance lasted 4 hours, was played 4 times and repeated at the Theaterspektakel in Zürich.

There, the group also showed their mockumentary Wilde Detektive, a musical evening with many original songs from previous productions that gives the answer to Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Free Theatre But Were Afraid to Ask.

As of the summer of 2010, Mass & Fieber is playing Geld und Gott (Money and God), a superhero-comedy after Dante. The play opened to packed audiences at the Theater Spektakel Zürich and was well received by spectators and critics alike. It has been invited to play in Mülheim, Hamburg, Jena, Bern, Altdorf, with further options in the wings.