THE MYSTERY OF NOTHING AND AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF SNOT

The mystery of nothing and an infinite amount of snot (ages 10, 12, 18, ∞ and up) is based on the book of the same title by Jan Paul Schutten about the origins of the universe.

What did things look like in the very beginning – when there was nothing but nothingness? Is the universe going to expand forever, or will it eventually all be squeezed back into nothingness again? In this play we take a great leap from the big bang to the far distant future; from trees that use the gases we breathe out to grow (and vice versa) to how the iron in our blood was made long ago in a supernova. And then there are those mysterious phenomena that wait till the last moment to decide whether they are waves or particles. In this play we even show how it’s not all that improbable that elsewhere in the universe there is some other form of life.

Using good old-fashioned, low-tech, spit-and-glue theatrical props we conjure up the immensity of nothingness in the minds of the audience.

It’s a play about how insignificant humanity and planet earth are in our immeasurable and apparently infinite expanding universe. It’s a play about how everything came to be, and how that all turns out to be a magnificent series of coincidences.

‘I suppose you’ve all seen a beautiful sunset at some time. Or a clear starlit sky that looks like it’s filled with sparkling diamonds … and perhaps it was at a moment like that when you started wondering where all those stars – and the sun, and the earth – actually come from. How did our universe come to exist? Why is there something instead of nothing? Wouldn’t it have made more sense for there to be nothing? Where did all that something suddenly come from? Has there always been something, or not? And if there ever was nothing, then how could something come out of it? But if there was always something, where did that something come from? And how far back does always go, anyway? What comes after infinite? Is infinite times infinite more than infinite? If you eat yourself, do you get twice the size or do you disappear?’

By/With Wessel Schrik, Manja Topper, Michael Yallop, Ramses van den Hurk, Carmen Schabracq, Bas Kosters and Jan Paul Schutten

This project is made possible in part by VSBfonds and Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK)