Musical. My year 2026 began with a new kind of musical: 1001.

While based on the original stories of 1001 Nights about Scheherazade, this production puts a modern twist on the tale. The lively storyteller Jonah and the cynical Ava are two people living in the present day. They meet just as Ava is about to take her own life—but Jonah persuades her to listen to just one more of his stories. Night after night, he tells her new tales, always in the hope that she will choose life for at least one more day.

We staged the musical at the KatiElli Theater in Datteln, which presented several challenges. First, the ceiling height was very low, and the stage depth was even more restricted. Due to structural load-bearing limits, we were unable to rig any additional fixtures to the ceiling beyond the house’s own equipment. This led to a second challenge: traditional, established lighting positions simply did not exist. As a result, I had to significantly adapt my approach, finding creative ways to create intimate, delicate moments to grand, imposing scenes with a very limited number of fixtures.

The set design was a collaborative effort between the author, Anke Pan, and myself. Our main goal was to create an authentic urban atmosphere. To achieve this, a set builder constructed a bridge for us, with the back wall featuring a city skyline. To give the entire scene more depth, we backlit both the bridge and the skyline with LED lights.

By placing moving lights along the downstage edge, I created additional depth through gobo projections. Anke Pan wanted to evoke the feeling that this scene could take place anywhere, which she achieved by covering the entire set in paper. I contributed radio-controlled RGB LED lanterns, which, along with paper fans, added the final decorative details to the set.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have the budget or the stage size to realize every single one of our ideas, but in the end, the results spoke for themselves — as did the reputation of the small but renowned KatiElli Theater. In total, we performed six shows at the venue.