SUBTERA
Musical Direction: Ralf Schmid
Direction: Leonie Fritsch
Game Sensors & Projection: Stella Speziali
Lighting: Steffen Melch
Sound: Ingo Rau
Musicians: Beatriz Picas, Tobias Herzog, Lino Schmid, Murat Coşkun
Stage Design: Heike Götze, Sönke Ober, Dirk Ober
Costume: Sigrun Fritsch
Project Management: Annika Mohr
Assistant: Lisa Weidemann
„Beneath the surface, life is pulsing. Subtera listens — and invites you to dive in.“ (Ralf Schmid)
Subtera is a concert and a game at once, engaging with what happens beneath our feet: the silent crisis of our soils. The audience immerses itself in a world below the surface, connecting with soil through sound, image and sensation. Drawing cards with tasks, they gradually discover that their gestures and movements alter the sound and image of the space. The audience becomes an active co-player.
The music of pianist and composer Ralf Schmid speaks of soil, plays with its own inherent sounds and imagines what it might sound like deep in the earth — in the network of roots and fungal threads. His five-piece Soil Music Collective — Beatriz Picas (voice/cello), Lino Schmid (voice/guitar/bass), Murat Coskun (percussion/voice), Tobias Herzog (trombone/tuba/sousaphone) and Ralf Schmid himself — surrounds the audience on platforms all around, enveloping the space in music.
The stage is not a podium — it is an ecosystem.
Playing with the Soil
Director Leonie Fritsch has developed, together with Lena Frei (game design), a dramaturgy that transfers the ideas and narrative threads of games into a concert situation. In collaboration with Stella Speziali (game implementation) and Heike Götze (stage concept), a three-dimensional world of images is projected onto walls and surfaces. Sensors by Sensopart register movement in the space, allowing the atmosphere to respond to what the audience does: projections shift, light and sound transform. It becomes tangible: everything is connected.
Making Soil Felt
Subtera is part of the EU Mission „A Soil Deal for Europe“ and is supported by the Innovation Fund for the Arts Baden-Württemberg. Project partners are Aktionstheater Pan.Optikum (Freiburg) and the Holistic Compost Lab (St. Peter, Black Forest).
Subtera makes soil processes audible and experienceable — connecting scientific knowledge with artistic imagination.
Soil Music — Background
Subtera grows out of Soil Music, a network connecting culture, agriculture, science and education, pooling forces to bring soil back into public awareness as a vital foundation of life. Its guiding principle: „We make soil good. We connect culture and agriculture. We cultivate soil for positive futures.“
Performances
Subtera Premiere: 29 and 30 July 2026, 19:00 and 21:00, Lokhalle Freiburg
Ticket reservations — please state title, date and time:
tickets@theater-panoptikum.de
Each of the four performances runs approximately 60 minutes. 50 tickets per performance are available for active participation. When purchasing, you may choose whether you wish to participate actively or attend as an observer.
Sliding Scale Pricing
€10 — Small Price
€15 — Reduced Price
€20 — Fair Price
€25 — Solidarity Price