as part of IMPULSE THEATER FESTIVAL 2023

08.06. – 18.06.2023

The Impulse Theatre Festival has been the most important platform for the independent performing arts in the German-speaking countries for more than 30 years. We will be hosting the SHOWCASE this year, presenting the productions selected by the jury at the FFT and at various other locales throughout Düsseldorf.

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Oliver Zahn

STEINERNE GÄSTE

Performance Theatre & Performance
Steinerne Gäste 060_David Baltzer.jpg

Oliver Zahn tells of the toppled statues of colonial masters and generals, about Lenin’s head and the eagle at the entrance to Tempelhof airport. They are cut up, buried, dug up again, smelted down, misappropriated as building materials, hidden and, not infrequently, put back up again. What happens to monuments after they have fallen reveals a great deal about the societies that wish to dispose of them – and often produces unintended metaphors that are absurdly comical.

The initial idea for the production came from Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’, whose music is repeatedly heard here. In the opera, the eponymous hero is stalked by the statue of a man that he murdered. Is the ghost real or a manic projection on the part of the perpetrator? In the theatre, stage fog rolls across the empty plinth. Who or what do we believe we can see in these elusive forms? What is clear is that the ghost will not be gone as long as the plinth is standing.

reviews

cast

By and with: Oliver Zahn, Dramaturgy: Felizitas Stilleke, Technical Direction: Dennis Dieter Kopp, Artistic Producer: Martina Neu

credits

An Oliver Zahn production in co-production with the HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin. Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe