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No light fare on stage

2022-05-13T10:30:54.364Z


No light fare on stage Created: 05/13/2022, 12:20 p.m Cautious applause at the end: the ensemble gave it their all, but the audience has to process the piece first. © Sabrina Graf It wasn't the time to just sit back and enjoy culture: the guest appearance of the "Theater an der Ruhr" overwhelmed many visitors in the Pullach community center. Pullach – Disturbing, dystopian, nightmarish: the en


No light fare on stage

Created: 05/13/2022, 12:20 p.m

Cautious applause at the end: the ensemble gave it their all, but the audience has to process the piece first.

© Sabrina Graf

It wasn't the time to just sit back and enjoy culture: the guest appearance of the "Theater an der Ruhr" overwhelmed many visitors in the Pullach community center.

Pullach

– Disturbing, dystopian, nightmarish: the ensemble of the “Theater an der Ruhr” was a guest at the Pullach community center with “Europe or the Dreams of the Third Reich”.

They want to whet the appetite for more theatre.

The viewers are then one thing above all: overwhelmed.

The doors to the theater hall in the Pullach community center do not open until three minutes before the start of the game.

A figure in a flared dress is already standing on the stage.

She is covered in blood: from her curls to the hem of her dress.

The woman looks like a statue, only the rise and fall of her chest shows that she is a real person.

The play “Europe or the Dreams of the Third Reich” has a disturbing effect on the audience before it even begins.

This piece, performed by the ten-person ensemble of the “Theater an der Ruhr”, does not offer an escape from everyday life.

Instead, the audience in the hall should be overwhelmed on all sensory channels.

Light installations, fake blood, a change of clothes on stage and the use of video technology ensure optical sensory overload.

Auditory one is confronted with feedback from the microphones, screams and echo-like distortions.

After all, you get to feel the excessive demand up close.

A fog machine emits dense clouds of smoke that spread across the auditorium in streaks and can even be smelled through an FFP2 mask.

The theater guests present are not allowed to take a breather.

Hot topic

The play takes place in 1945 and is still highly topical.

The German-American Leopold, played by Albert Bork, drives through devastated post-war Germany as a sleeper conductor for the train company “Zentropa”.

The train is represented by five frames fitted with lights, from which blood occasionally drips onto the figures.

The conductor marries into the Hartmann family, which owns "Zentropa", and turns out to be a group of werewolves.

"Werewolves," explains dramaturg Helmut Schäfer, "those were the ones who continued their skirmishes and were infected by the virus of fascist ideology even after the war." Ukraine are linked in "Europe or the Dreams of the Third Reich".

Schäfer states:

The director of the Pullach community center, Hannah Stegmayer, is enthusiastic about the pictures, the language and the creative stage directions.

She hopes to attract young people in particular to the theater with the current material.

So it's a good thing that there is a 10th class from the Otfried-Preußler-Gymnasium in Pullach.

Sabine Simon, teacher for German, history and social studies, organized the visit to the theater after the two-year break.

"The play was so full, many topics were touched upon and at times it was hard to bear." The 10th graders also seem as if they still have to organize and process the many impressions.

Paulina Thiele, 15, says she hasn't fully understood the context of the play yet: “I couldn't follow the plot very well;

often the context was missing.

Some go before the end

While the young students can deal with the sensory overload to some extent, older guests seem to have a different experience: some leave the hall early.

At the end the applause is rather subdued.

"Europe or the Dreams of the Third Reich" is based on two films by Lars von Trier and on a collection of texts by the Jewish journalist Charlotte Beradt about nightmares that were dreamed between 1933 and 1939.

The provocative play interweaves the basics of film and text with propaganda, terror and the abolition of all privacy.

The two characters Niels and Lars (Alexander Gier and Fabio Menéndez) comment on the creation of the screenplay on a meta level.

There are also elements from hypnosis and trauma therapy.

In short: it's a lot at once.

"Europe or the Dreams of the Third Reich" wants to overwhelm.

SABRINA COUNT

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-05-13

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