Silo8

They call themselves "Karls Kühne Gassenschau" (Carl's bold streetshow), and that's what they are indeed. It's street theatre blown up to incredible proportions, lots of action, pyrotechnical stunts, any stunts you wish, actually, spectacular sound and good humour. Karls Kühne Gassenschau are always worth a visit.

Their current play is called Silo8 and tells a story from the future, where there are way to many elderly people, so they wipe out their memory, stuff them into container villages, and store them like rabbits until they die. But the senior citizens fight back. They try to escape, get hold of a little bit of their memory again and overturn the dictatorship of an evil doctor. Finally, Alfredo remembers Aurora again and together they fly into the night.

The story so far. But then there are the special effects! A quad racing against a motorized wheelchair, a fully fledged washing machine for humans, exploding (and collapsing) buildings (twin towers, actually...), a flying merry-go-round and a dream ship propelled by a jelly fish. The great thing about the show is that they always overdo it a little bit. No, not a little bit. A lot. Where a senseful person would stop pouring petrol, they add another bathtub full. Where you would strongly suggest to tighten the screws, they don't. And if you have the feeling that the length of the rope will not ensure their security, for them it's just fine. Like that they keep the anarchy in their show. And that is good. The first row reveives blankets together with the instruction to use them for protection, and yes, they will not tell when, it will be obvious.

Last week we went to Olten to watch them. Of course, after all the years the whole show has become big. Heaps of visitors, catering, shuttle busses etc., but there is still the boss welcoming you, ushering people to free seats and when 20 of them had no place to sit, they told the audiencence on the benches to shift a little bit, and voila: everybody was seated and happy.

And now, we will go for a stroll, and later on feature some pictures of where we live...