The year 2000 stands for a time we now look back on with a peculiar warmth. There was a sense of peace, the economy was booming, the internet was opening up—and for a brief moment, it felt like anything was possible.

With a reenactment of the first season of Big Brother, the European theatre collective BOYS* IN SYNC opens a time portal to Germany in the year 2000. The show becomes a massive success: millions of Germans tune in every evening, while thousands gather outside the container in Cologne—cheering for their favourites, booing others, even hurling threats. The term “haters” did not yet exist - but while the male contestants are celebrated, hostility is directed primarily at the young women in the container. In chanting crowds, headlines, and talk shows, a country reveals itself—its longings, its resentments, its ideas of community.

Stripping the material down to its core, the performance uses no props and no set: two performers reconstruct the 100 days inside the Big Brother house and expose the mechanisms of publicity, surveillance, and social dynamics that still shape us today…

Are you aware that about 85 percent of all Germans know you now?
Even the BILD newspaper wrote about you. It says it was hell with you in the house, that you had a nervous breakdown.
Did you have a nervous breakdown, Manu? Was that the case?