The Musketier as mobile phone-booth

The Mobile Phone

Bicycles have always played a major and central role at foolpool.

It started with the daily velo ride from Laufen to Freilassing for our joint theatre rehearsal (as a 15-year-old country dweller, the bicycle was the first step towards mobility and independence), continued with our "herd of machine beings" – a walking sculpture made of bicycles – and now leads to our latest programme: The Mobile Phone.

We take an entirely unconventional look at this indispensable everyday device, picking up the thread that modern humans seem to have lost in their dealings with the mobile phone: communication.
After all, the telephone was invented so that people could connect with one another – but take a look around an average tram car and you'll hardly see anyone who isn't staring at their smartphone – usually with bulky headphones on, cutting themselves off even further from the real world.

Our mobile phone is different! Here, the phone is the carriage – and at its base, a MUSKETIER by Radkutsche. You get in, make a call, and receive the task of immediately leaving the phone booth again and connecting directly and in real life with your surroundings. The phone becomes a means to an end again, not a programmed end in itself.
The task is clear: communicate with the (still unfamiliar) people around you. You play tic-tac-toe, dance the waltz, make plans together, or perform a poem for your audience. As varied as life itself, so varied are the tasks.

Why all of this becomes possible …

Even its appearance alone invites a smile and sparks curiosity. An old, red British telephone box on the one hand and a bicycle on the other draw in the audience. It's not only the red telephone box that stands for communication – the bicycle itself is a metaphor too. Anyone who gets around by bicycle is in direct contact with their environment. Weather, traffic, and fellow human beings are directly experienced by the rider; there is no box between you and the world.
Out of the boxes of civilisation. Out into life. That is the message conveyed by the performance "The Mobile Phone". Let yourself be surprised by yourself. Lift off. Dare to do it!