THE THEATRE ON THE EDGE OF SPACE

text by Ali H. Zerdin
photos by Miha Fras and others

The parabolic airplane suddenly went wild. It seemed that the plane's engines, the size of an elephant, had suddenly doubled their power. The alarm bell went off, and the plane rose towards a height of 9 thousand meters in an instant. The time had come for the show to begin. The Cosmokinetic Cabinet Noordung, a Theatre project by Dragan Ćivadinov and his team, had a clear goal. It would perform a theatre show called Biomechanics Noordung to its audience in a gravity-free environment. The plane left the airport in Moscow in the early hours of the morning, taking with it a team of Russian instructors, theatre actors, half a dozen viewers and a film crew. Just before the show was about to begin, the plane accelerated once more and started slowing down a second later. The force of inertia would have catapulted the passengers had the pilot not caught the flight curve of the catapulted passengers. The force of gravity suddenly disappeared. The force of inertia equaled all the other forces and we suddenly found ourselves in a gravitational vacuum.