Mata Hari gets naked

Landsberg - Mata Hari went down in history as a “beautiful spy”. In doing so, she probably never had any essential information that she could have revealed. The scientist Marie Curie, meanwhile, has been praised for goals of the Polish women's movement, for which she did not advocate herself. Two women who shimmer in the public eye - and stand in a light that illuminates them incorrectly - or who blinds us viewers. The Munich touring theater “theaterlust” and Sabine Mittelhammer from the Berlin company “Handmaids” have approached the two women with their plays.

The performance of 'Marie Curie' in the production of the touring theater 'theaterlust' chose the biographical approach in order to get closer to the idol Marie Curie (you can read the review of this performance here.) Sabine Mittelhammer chooses another path in her approach to Mata Hari: that “Eye of the day”, a fictional character that was highly stylized by others - and who did everything to turn this stylization even higher. The woman who says she was born in Sumatra; in the gray reality, however, it was Margaretha Geertruida cell who was born in the Netherlands in 1876. There are hardly any certainties about Mata Hari - and this is where Mittelhammer comes in: She tries to understand the icon from the perspective of the present: by comparing herself, the independent artist, with Mata Hari, the independent artist.Because she can only try to decipher Mata Hari's picture puzzle on her own initiative.

And so Mittelhammer appears as Mittelhammer: She prepares the stage when the hall is lit, ponders out loud what her life is like. Finally she can play again, after Corona. An application for funding has to be submitted, the money has to come from somewhere. “And now the gaffa is all over”, she complains, and brings the props - a feather duster and a baguette, which Mata Hari and her playmates later embody during sex - onto the stage. Only then does the hall light go out.

This amalgamation of Mittelhammer / Mata Hari characterizes the piece. Mittelhammer ticks off the dates on a small folding calendar, where she acts as the narrator. Or she becomes Mata Hari herself, poses, declaims in a stilted tone, imitates the icon's striptease behind a screen. She plays other characters behind cardboard figures, a bit of a show booth mentality. But she is also Sabine Mittelhammer. The question is whether Mata Hari smoked the actually existing cigarette brand 'Mata Hari' - maybe she should infect a 'Sabine Mittelhammer'? The question arises as to whether, as a freelance artist - so free that she can get a beer from outside during the performance - one has to be megalomaniac like Mata Hari in order to survive. Imagine what it would be like with a lot of money from a patron: "Put concrete dolls in the football stadium",the puppeteer fantasizes, "1,000 extras, I want Wagner, battlefields!"

Mittelhammer also describes the existential needs of a freelance artist.

The rejection, the constant need to stick to it, the uncertainty of the future: problems like twelve fatal shots, based on Mata Hari's twelve-man firing squad.

With her one-hour solo piece, Mittelhammer Mata Hari takes the nimbus of the icon, makes her human - and herself 'naked', the actress becomes a person.

Through this courageous 'unveiling' in the literal sense, 'Mata Hari' becomes a piece about being an artist.

With the poetry of illusion when the magic flower dances on the turntable Mata Hari in the stroboscopic light.

With a convincing actress.

And their extremely warm, captivating sense of humor.