Shows on the Rise at VAULT 2018: Das Fest

The VAULT Festival is coming to town! From January 24th to March 18th, over three hundred new shows explode across a festival of festivals in their Waterloo home. With new venues, new bars, new food and plenty of surprises, VAULT 2018 is the biggest, fairest platform in London for artists to present innovative, daring work. We caught up with Philipp Oberlohr to find out about the influences behind his new mind-reading show, Das Fest.

I’m grinning like a little school boy thinking about how I’ve found new ways to combine old principles (some of them very old). But more importantly I’m excited about sharing the beauty of small, seemingly trivial memories. Think of a memory from your life that is important to you. Really do it.

How often have you thought about this, since it happened? How often have you told it to somebody? How often have you heard other people share important memories? My (educated) guess is the first number is low and it’s quickly going down. Why is that? Especially if they are important ones, memories that shape us? Very strange.

Das Fest is a mind reading experience that celebrates those memories.

This show is very much inspired by Master and Margarita (Bulgakov), Fargo (TV Series) and Haruki Murakami. I like Murakami’s strangeness, you immediately get the feeling that something is… off. Fargo introduces different storylines in a way that is satisfyingly unsatisfying, something I have never seen in a mind reading show. Something I’d like to see in a mind reading show. Mikhail Bulgakov creates a world that provides a theatrical home for a character with the skill set I have.

We are taking the freedom to pick and choose, and most importantly change as we see fit.

Being part of VAULT means… being able to take smart risks. We are still in the process of creating the show. I am convinced it can be amazing and beautiful. But will it? That’s something I need to find out. What I know for sure is: We have glimpsed beauty and amazement. With all our preparation we are trying to take risks in a smart way. But there are risks nonetheless. VAULT is the perfect home for that.

Das Fest will run at VAULT Festival from 28 February until 4 March 2018 at 19:45. Tickets and more information can be found here.