8 Big Foreheads, ??? Acts, 1 Century Later

Three Billion Sisters is an opera (?) done by a high school group (?) in collaboration with Volksbühne (?). It was (mostly) in German, with German subtitles. Lucky us. The nonsensical production was supported by a nonsensical understanding of what was going on. It would be a disservice to the show to even remotely attempt to describe what took place on the stage over the course of two hours. 

What I will present to you is an inventory of my thoughts that occurred to me over the course of the show. This perhaps (with a grain of salt) may have been the show I enjoyed the most so far because there was no pressure to understand it or contemplate it. Enjoyment does not necessarily mean it was good, but it brought me joy. It felt like I sat down on my couch on a Saturday morning to watch the Jetsons with my family. Lighthearted. (unintentionally) Funny. Most certainly an experience. 

Inventory:

• 8 sisters in fact, not three billion
• They are indeed a chorus of teenage girls like we have seen before, but let hypnotic than our girls in Cry Baby
• They surpass a five-head. It’s probably like a ten-head honestly. But the huge foreheads and George Washington-esque hair did a lot for them. Mostly the huge foreheads made room for whatever mechanisms were necessary to shoot haze and glitter out of the tops of their heads. Geez they must have been heavy.
• Please please please look up the song Three Billion Summers. I honestly believe that this was the inspiration for the production. Just listen to it. They sang it. I cried I was laughing so hard. The other audience members did not appreciate it. 
• ALSO THEY MADE A MUSIC VIDEO. These 8 teenage girls took this song and made a music video for it in front of Volksbühne. It has absolutely no correlation to the design of the production. Here it is: https://youtu.be/3TEBvMJFY1k
• 3/4 of the stage was a huge rake that was supposed to be a dome surface. All I could think about was them slipping off and falling. They literally shuffled around the surface like they were afraid of it. I think it could have been less steep and still accomplished the same effect. 
• Two songs were in english. They were both pop (?) songs. This leads me to believe that they conceived this entire opera (?) on their own. Please enjoy some of these lyrics: Boomerang my happy face, boomerang my sad face, boom boom boomerang. Crying bacardi tears. We’re shakin booties. I was gonna clean my room but then I got high. I was gonna feel emotion but then I got high. 
• One of the trap doors broke at one point and was sticking up. And it happened right before the ballet number (yes the ballet number). No one fixed it. I really thought they were going to break their necks. They were bumping into each other because they had to adjust themselves because of the trap door. 
• In addition to a ballet number there was a solo hiphop number by some irrelevant character that went on for faaaaaaaaaar too long
• There was a comet (ie. Komet). This comet was a girl. Hanging from the fly system. In a huge hoop skirt. There were moments where she literally came down for a single line and then went right back up. It was hilarious. 
• Let’s talk about the fourth act. It consisted of the curtain opening. Glitter cannons firing. One line of vocalization. And the curtain closing. And that was it. 
• So much yellow. 
• They tried to do the live video thing and project it on moon-like surfaces. That was pretty cool. It made no sense, but still pretty cool. 
• One of the sisters was on stilts and then there was this huge shadow moment where she took the stilts off. Not really sure what that was about. 
• There was a gasoline can. With gold glitter inside. A man in a white latex coat sprinkled it around the stage and lit a match. I think that was supposed to be the end of the world?
• The subtitles were fun. Sometimes they didn’t match up with what they were singing. Sometimes on purpose sometimes not. “One century later.....”

Overall it was so much fun to sit in the show. I cried twice because I was laughing so hard. I spent a lot of it with my jaw open. I spent a lot of it dancing in my seat. The nonsense was good for my heart, my head, and my artistic sense.