Hades, the god of the dead, desires Eurydice and takes her into his kingdom. Her husband Orpheus descends into the underworld to search for her. He is allowed to take her back with him under the condition that he does not look at her on their way back to the upper world. His love for her causes him to look back, she dies again. Orpheus has lost her forever. The classic legend was a model for many dramatic works such as, for example, operas from Claudio Monteverdi (1607) and Christoph Willibald Gluck (1762), as well as the operetta »Orphée aux enfers« (»Orpheus in the Underworld«) from Jacques Offenbach (1858).

The theatre RambaZamba was founded by Gisela Höhne and Klaus Erforth in 1991. From myth, it makes lively theatre, full of humour and humanity. The changes between excess and stylisation, allusions to opera and ironic everyday life give new meaning to the topic of the battle of the sexes. In 2001 RambaZamba was a guest at the euro-scene Leipzig with Samuel Beckett’s »Endgame«.

»RambaZamba is an integrative theatre, four of the performers of the Eurydices and the Orpheus’s have Down’s syndrome and thus face certain limitations with regard to their movements and ways to express themselves. However, one would never think of using the term amateur or handicapped theatre group. The concept and rhythm of the performance is so finely suited to the actors that their handicap seems more a strength than a deficiency« (Frankfurter Rundschau, 06.09.2001).

»Rarely have you seen an audience so quiet. Magic seconds. Theatre luck. One of those rare moments in which the viewer is mesmerised, instinct flares, loneliness, desolation, vulnerability – the human condition, with no protection at all« (Stern, Hamburg, Nr. 52 vom 19.12.2001).