Münchner Kammerspiele: Departure into life with “Holy Scripture 1”
Created: 05/16/2022Updated: 05/16/2022 15:24
By: Michael Schleicher
Munich Kammerspiele: An ICE compartment was recreated for “Heiligeschrift 1”.
© Maurice Korbel/Münchner Kammerspiele
"Holy Scripture 1" is the name of the new text by Wolfram Lotz, which has just been published as a book by S. Fischer Verlag.
Falk Richter has now staged the mammoth work of more than 900 pages for the Munich Kammerspiele.
Read our review of the premiere here.
He knows exactly what he did on November 6, 2017.
Wolfram Lotz actually knows – more precisely: his first-person narrator in “Holy Scripture 1” – that for pretty much every day of that year.
Anyway, on November 6, a magnum of champagne, a crow, a photograph of a car played certain roles;
the actor Christian Löber packs these and a few other objects from a gray archive box onto the small table in front of him and reports on that November day five years ago.
Those are intensive minutes in the Therese-Giehse-Halle of the Munich Kammerspiele.
Not because something special is being negotiated here, but because Löber makes a big fuss out of it with his acting.
Munich Kammerspiele: Suddenly Peter Maffay is on the stage
"Holy Scripture 1" is a crazy project by the celebrated playwright Lotz: he and his family moved to a village in Alsace for a year in 2017, the reason for this was his partner's job change.
The author, born in 1981, tried to capture his life as completely and directly as possible, day by day, using all literary means.
Diary, dreams, correspondence, TV news, weather forecasts, in short: the banal and stupid, the desperate and the playful, the profound and the tabular, the conceited and the idiosyncratic – for example when Peter Handke, Miley Cyrus, Brecht, Frank-Walter Steinmeier or Peter Maffay appear in the text .
Ultimately, there are around 3,000 pages that Lotz deletes.
However, since he had already e-mailed around 900 pages to a friend while he was writing them, which he still had in his mailbox,
"Holy Scripture 1": Christian Löber explains Wolfram Lotz's archive to a viewer.
© Maurice Korbel/Münchner Kammerspiele
Falk Richter has now staged it for the Kammerspiele, where Lotz' fabulous spoken opera Die Politicians can also be seen.
Saturday, May 14, 2022 was the premiere of the two-hour, non-stop evening.
The premiere, for which each guest receives headphones and an iPhone, is divided into three parts: In the foyer of the Giehse Halle, an audio play by Matthias Grübel introduces "Heiligeschrift 1".
Then it goes to the heart of the production, for which Heike Schuppelius has recreated an apartment, an ICE wagon and a piece of forest.
In the latter, the audience gathers for the third part of the production, which is most indebted to traditional peep-box theatre: here the eight-person ensemble brings the flow of text together in an enrapturingly comical finale.
"Holy Scripture 1": Suddenly Peter Maffay is on the stage.
© Maurice Korbel/Münchner Kammerspiele
Of course, the most exciting part is the middle part – every viewer can design it themselves.
Audio plays can be played using QR codes, you can explore the forest with VR glasses or an iPad in your hand, which is important to Lotz, you can/can/should get involved with furnishing the house - or you can follows the actors: those you have known and loved for years, or those who are fairly new to the house.
The Munich Kammerspiele are also showing “The Politicians” by Wolfram Lotz
Although the production is technically flawless and all media stations are easy to use (technicians are discreetly located throughout the rooms to answer any questions): none of this comes close to the intensity of the ensemble.
Whether the famous Edmund Telgenkämper reports on a visit to the dentist or Christian Löber tells what Lotz did, thought and felt on November 6th, 2017.
Everything takes place in parallel, no one experiences the same “Holy Scripture 1” – but no one has to worry about missing out either: it is simply life that is happening here.
(More theatre? Read our interview with Barbara Mundel, director of the Munich Kammerspiele here.)
