Kerstin Steeb & Team

One of the strangest declarations ever made by a lover to their beloved is Lohengrin’s demand to Elsa: “Never shall you ask me.” Is this a desperate attempt to be loved unconditionally? In our unromantic times, where dating apps have become the number one place to meet, users are instead thoroughly questioned, showcasing an overload of every possible detail about themselves in their profiles. Two completely opposing strategies, yet both chasing the same goal: How do you find true love? Who saves you from loneliness? Who makes you feel whole?

In the music theatre performance IT’S A MATCH, singers and audience move through an immersive labyrinth in search of a way out of over-rationalisation. This walk-in opera in eight acts becomes a neo-romantic ghost train, where reason is shaken and feeling is reawakened. Do we really need to know everything about the person we love? Can there even be desire without mystery and risk? And what if the usual feminist critique of Wagner’s ban on questions falls short—what if it leads us into a dead end?

Perhaps, at the end of that dead end, a place of real emotion still awaits: the elevator. A classic site for protected self-presentation in mirrored walls, but also one of suddenness—of being caught off guard when the doors slide open. The audience is invited to enter this space of interactive, sensual moments across eight elevators: to observe, or to try themselves as a modern-day Elsa or Lohengrin.