July news

THERE_HIER / DORT premiered on 21 June in Düsseldorf at the Freies Forum Theater. A ravishing dialogue between an actress & a musician on the text by Etel Adnan. „I threw my memories out the window and they came back, …Is that why the sun is so joyless when it looks at us, and why is there so much love under the heat and the truth?“

There is a highly topical prose poem of immense power by the Lebanese-American poet, philosopher and painter Etel Adnan (1925-2021). Written in 1997, during the war in Yugoslavia, it deals with conflicts between individuals, societies and the sexes: „If you have an enemy, and you are completely obsessed with him, this enemy will occupy your head. He becomes you. This is a difficult situation. There are victories in history that are worse than defeats.“ The musician and composer Ulrike Haage transforms Etel Adnan’s poem into an open musical-sound fabric in the back and forth of thinking and speaking, live „on, in and under“ the grand piano and in dialogue with the actress Veronika Bachfischer (Schaubühne, Berlin).

The project was initiated by the dramaturge and translator Klaudia Ruschkowski, who was a close friend of Etel Adnan. Both Haage and Ruschkowski as well as Haage and Bachfischer have already worked together on several radio plays. In a team with the artistic director Kathrin Tiedemann and the theatre’s stage crew, they implemented the project.

„Then we were visited by a being to whom none of the gods gave a name, and we called it Death, and it gained power over us, and autumn with its first day scattered yellowish leaves over our beds; then the trees stared at their own nakedness, and we did not come to their aid.“

(c)Fotos: Christian Knieps

And in July we are also starting a new radio play production with the Bavarian Broadcast. I did write the manuscript for a radio play phantasy on the experimental filmmaker Maya Deren. Featuring Martina Gedeck, Marina Frenk, Robert Stadlober and Valery Tscheplanowa.