Goodbye Johnny

The setting, time and reality of this one-man solo are in constant flux, just as our gaze and memory keep adjusting. Goodbye Johnny revolves around how the marginalized, the disadvantaged, the injured are simultaneously excluded and put on display. Sensation and irritation also appear simultaneously, because the switch from normality to exclusion happens quickly and is intense, possibly irreversible. But how does it really feel to live in such a world? Goodbye Johnny creates an experience that enables us to oscillate between different emotional states, which in turn opens up forms of understanding. Based on the story of Johnny, who was the greatest attraction of a ghost train for a long time and could slip into any character thanks to his lanky and flexible body, but is humiliated and laughed at in the outside world, Martin Zimmermann allows us to oscillate between different emotional states – just like Johnny, who starts using discarded materials and strange objects to build a wonderfully absurd maze that embodies his inner world between pain and freedom.

[Text by Tanzhaus Zürich]