While Elon Musk has his sights set on Mars to create a colony for a million billionaires by 2050, the theatre collective andcompany&Co. are confronting the Martian landscape that we humans have already created ourselves through climate change: Welcome to “MarsOnEarth”! This sci-fi happening – a combination of science, activism, and art – is taking shape at the Floating University Berlin. Following in the footsteps of the sci-fi novels “The Red Star” (1907) and “Engineer Menni” (1913) by Soviet author Alexander Bogdanov, andcompany&Co. encounter a utopian, high-tech Mars society that, after having exhausted its own planet’s resources, is planning to colonise Earth. It seems as if the past were writing the future here. But what can the present make of it?

Joined by activist citizens, scientists, and performers, the collective is searching for planetary visions of an earthly future. On the stage, suspended above the rainwater retention basin of the former Tempelhof Airport, the threatened earth habitat is presented as a post-apocalyptic scenario, incorporating objects and costumes by visual artist Raul Walch sustainably produced from upcycled materials. Backed by retro-futuristic synthesiser sounds, collective Martian training sessions will be held and transformation councils founded, degrowth communism negotiated, and the planet cult tested as a new practice of earthly coexistence: “Planetarians of all countries, unite!”