Mama Fortuna started in 2017, when I was invited to create an installation for a puppet theater festival in Vienna. I've always been fascinated by how easily we believe stories, if we just hear them often enough. How willing we are to lay our fate in the hands of some bigger power. And how freeing that can be.
So I decided I wanted to work with that. The installation itself was forest-like. Inside it, there were stations where people could write down fears, dreams, wishes; places where they had to do something for their wishes to come true. But all of that was just the waiting corridor. It led to Mama Fortuna: an ancient creature who rarely left her forest, but was present now, to read people their fortune.
In the forest lived the siblings, who guided visitors and told them how to behave once they reached Mama Fortuna. They told the story of how their father had abandoned them after their mother died, left them in the forest to die; and how, by luck, they found Mama Fortuna's house instead. She took them in. Family, ever since.
The encounter with Mama Fortuna herself was one-on-one. People were brought into a small, dark room where she was waiting — a large puppet, a performer inside — and there was a small ritual before they left with "their" fortune.
Some time before that, I'd read that if you give people a random horoscope but tell them it was written specifically for them, they will find that it matches their life exactly. They'll experience it as true, as helpful. And that's what happened. Our horoscopes were mostly surreal nonsense, and still, people found comfort in them. They were moved by the experience, which surprised me, since we'd been upfront: this was a performance, not a real fortune teller. But the moment Mama Fortuna looked at them, looked into them, and had a fortune meant only for them, that moment felt precious. Special. And I loved that about it.
When the festival ended, Mama Fortuna didn't leave my mind. I kept talking about that experience, over and over. It became one of my favorite projects.
Years later, working with a director in Dresden, it turned out she had seen Mama Fortuna back then and loved it. That was the moment I decided: Mama Fortuna needs to rise again.

By then I'd already been to Lofoten, Norway, twice for work, and had fallen in love with it; deeply, a little madly. I knew the figure theater there ran co-productions and project development weeks, so I applied with Mama Fortuna. This time I didn't want it as a festival sideshow. I wanted to build something that could stand on its own. And I got the invitation.
That's when the real challenge began: I didn't want to make a theater show. I get bored fast sitting through one. The only thing that's ever held my interest is when I get to move, explore, discover a story on my own terms. So that's what I set out to build: an art installation that tells a story, with real dramaturgy and a world that holds together, performers included, but not a theater show.
I worked hard writing and imagining all of it. What I landed on held everything my work keeps circling back to: what does it take for us to believe in something? What does it take to believe at all? And what does it take to ignore a small sign that promises a curse if you do, or don't do something? (A lot of courage, I think.)
There's a thread running underneath all of it that I want to give proper space to, because it's the real spine of the piece: witch hunts, and how a story, told often enough, becomes belief becomes fact becomes violence. What it did to someone when a neighbor decided they'd seen the devil visit at night. How fear, repeated, turns dangerous. And how the printing press became something like the final nail in the coffin for the women of that era, because now word could travel fast, and a rumor could reach around the world before anyone could stop it. That's the question underneath everything Mama Fortuna does: what a system needs from us to keep running, and what we hand over without noticing.
I brought two performers to Norway. One I've known for ten years of immersive theater together; he also performed in the first Mama Fortuna. And an actor I've made several object- and puppet-based projects with.
And that's how the Mama Fortuna show was born: a story about systems; how they work, what they need to keep working, how central stories are to being human, and how dangerous they can be at the very same time.
I built the world outward from there. A brother and a sister, sent by their father to die in the forest. A witch, Mama Fortuna, her name inspired by Mommy Fortuna and her Midnight Carnival from *The Last Unicorn*; takes them in, raises them. People come to have their fortunes read by her. A man finds them, and takes the whole thing on tour. They've been touring ever since. A machine that can't stop moving. A system that only works if everyone plays their part; and Mama Fortuna at the center of it, needing people to believe.
And once again, Mama Fortuna worked her magic. What we made in Norway was everything I'd hoped for.
Now we have an almost-finished piece and one open question left: where do we go from here? But I'll find a way. Because I have this strong feeling that Mama Fortuna has to exist in the world, that people have to come see her. I've told myself that so many times now, it can be nothing but true.