The mystery of the coffee-shop meltdown told by dancers, a drummer and a brown bear

"One morning, playwright Vivienne Franzmann was queueing for a coffee when an argument broke out. A customer absolutely lost it, says Franzmann. She was demanding her drink, shouting and swearing, and the rest of us stood there not knowing what to do. When Franzmann got to the rehearsal studio, she shared the story with Frauke Requardt, a choreographer she had just started working with."

"I said, This arsehole started screaming about her coffee.' I was really appalled. Requardt had a different response. She said the woman died a social death', recalls Franzmann. As well as being a choreographer, Requardt is a psychotherapist, and she explained what would have been happening in the woman's nervous system at the time, the famous fight, flight or freeze state (the sympathetic nervous system) versus the rest and digest state (parasympathetic)."

"Our ability to cope with these fluctuating states is called the window of tolerance and that morning in the cafe, the window didn't just crack, the glass was blown out completely. Franzmann and Requardt knew straight away this made for the beginnings of a show, and the coffee-shop incident has become the basis for an enjoyable and informative dance-theatre piece, Anatomy of Survival, that the pair have co-created."

Playwright Vivienne Franzmann witnessed a customer erupt in a café, shouting, swearing and demanding a drink, leaving bystanders uncertain how to respond. Choreographer and psychotherapist Frauke Requardt interpreted the outburst through nervous-system dynamics, contrasting fight‑flight‑freeze activation with parasympathetic rest-and-digest and describing the breached window of tolerance. Franzmann and Requardt transformed the episode into Anatomy of Survival, a dance‑theatre piece that combines a lighthearted psychology lecture with 23 fictional witness accounts, each offering different versions of blame. The performance uses jolting cymbal crashes, shaking choreography, and surreal imagery, including a large brown bear, to probe anger, social reaction and coping mechanisms.

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