The finest equation to represent order, rigidity, simplicity and inescapability is F=ma. If you push something, it will react by moving. Mathematically it cannot be more simple than that, but it applies to so much in our world. A rock rolling down a hill. Why the moon and the sun cause the tides. Why the earth bulges out more near the equator than elsewhere. Al these phenomena are explained in this simple equation: F=ma, force equals mass multiplied by acceleration.

The performance F=ma starts off from the novel Moonnight by the Albanian writer Ismael Kadare, a Nobel Prize literature candidate. The book tells the story of a woman becoming the victim of a hallucinating gossip campaign. When the novel was published in Albania in 1985, it was instantly banned by the authorities, who thought it criticized the communist regime. Carly Wijs starts off from this story to create a profoundly touching performance about beauty and mystery, and about how small events can have huge consequences – just like that one basic natural law, F=ma…