Um Kopf und Kragen (a German idiom for talking yourself into trouble) - the talk performance from Schmitt&Schulz

Normally Schmitt&Schulz interview interesting guests from culture and society, but this time they invite each other onto their talk show. They have collected the most burning questions that finally need to be asked and answered, revealing their personal values and political viewpoints. But be careful! If they don't want to answer a question, they have to perform terrifying tasks instead... Behind the scenes, Mo Walker, online from Hamburg, is pulling the strings as usual.

"Um Kopf und Kragen" is the hybrid version of a live stream broadcast in 2021. The two performers Nic Schmitt and Peter Schulz ask each other questions from social and political fields. In the course of the performance, the ostensibly friendly mutual invitation turns into a competitive situation in which each wants to make the other look as bad as possible by tempting each other to make embarrassing or discrediting statements.

The whole thing is controlled by an omnipresent, faceless director, who takes statements made out of context and rubs them over the performers as discrediting subtitles.

The performance "Um Kopf und Kragen" is an ironic look at talk shows, real life docu-soaps and game shows and the question of whether we don't all now have to think very carefully about what statements we want to make publicly on social and political issues, as these are preserved in the social media for years. What serious, personal consequences can a photo, a statement that one shares carelessly in one phase of life have in another phase of life? And: do you always have to have an opinion on everything?

"Um Kopf und Kragen" consists of a live performance that is similar to a TV studio: the audience watches the actions on stage and in parallel the projection of the stream on a screen. The live audience is filmed. These recordings are then inserted into the live stream. The actions on stage are subtitled in the live stream and manipulated using green screen technology. For the live audience, this makes the image manipulation obvious and comprehensible. The online audience sees a kind of live TV show that is supplemented by pre-produced inserts.