Urbit et Orbit

A crazy trip to heavenly salvation 

Urbi et orbi ('For the city and for the world'), it's the traditional blessing the pope pronounces at Easter and Christmas. The visits to church of Denise Wintsch as a child were her first acquaintance with an absurd world. Urbit&Orbit is an anarchistic continuation of a journey she once interrupted.

Wintsch about Urbit&Orbit in the Swiss magazine Fabrikszeitung : “The priest recited and all the parishioners answered in the same tone : 'Lord hear our prayer'. As a child I was afraid of this ritual. Only when I myself began to speak along in this dangerous tone, it was less bad. At that moment, I realised, perhaps for the first time, that I loved theatre. The church and the service felt like one big show, a performance in which the priest was the protagonist and the acolytes the extras.'

However, don't expect a decent sacred service from Urbit&Orbit : starting from the protagonists and rituals within the catholic church Wintsch creates a new cosmos, a crazy mass in a circus tent. Wintsch, who was awarded the most important Swiss incentive prize for this performance, is a specialist in the incarnation of suppressed and forgotten feelings, which she evokes in Urbit&Orbit with a lot of graceful humour. She might be canonized for this one day, who knows !

Denise Wintsch is an actress and theatre maker. She was trained at the school for movement theatre llg in Zürich. Urbit&Orbit is her third performance after Regula-Alle Tage sind Alltage in 2009 and für immer in 2014. Next to this, Denise Wintsch also unleashes her characters and ideas in for instance videoclips, music bands and radio plays.

Wintsch's investigation interests are in thinking up and trying out different forms of performing. She is inspired by the abyss people may fall into and the absurd things she herself experiences and observes. Thus the 'Regula' in her first piece stood for human failure in a society that is economized through and through.

“Ein noch neueres Testament.”  Tages Anzeiger