The 200th anniversary of Kleist’s death in late November and my general interest in working with the performer Barbara Kraus inspired me to finally get around to spending some time on my favourite author, the exhilarating Kleist, his “cheerful” suicide, his longing for Vienna, his resistance. Uncompromising, he never could resign himself to the way things were – resisting, ever resolute when it came to prevailing conditions – that’s what we’re all interested in and ultimately what brought us all together: the performer Barbara Kraus and myself, the “theatre” director, supported by a critical dramaturge and a diligent assistant.
Despite police brutality resulting in several injured protesters, a group of Albanian artists and intellectuals succeeded in occupying the Albanian National Theatre, which is currently under threat of demolition, in the centre of the capital Tirana on Wednesday morning, as the Alliance to Protect the Theatre (Aleancapër mbrojtjen e Teatrit) reported that afternoon.
Under the cloak of darkness, the diggers advanced on the Albanian National Theatre in Tirana to tear down its façade. 1,500 police officers stormed the building on Sunday morning at around 4.30 a.m., using tear gas and arresting 20 of the theatre’s occupiers.
7 Oct 22 – Friday
Arrival at London Heathrow: after a great and intensive rehearsal period in the Waldviertel, Lower Austria, during the summer, Alexandra Sommerfeld and I arrive in London on Friday, 7 October at the invitation of the Austrian Cultural Forum ACF. The premiere of Shadow. Eurydice says was originally planned for the autumn of 2021, but due to Covid it ended up being postponed several times …
The first rehearsal on-site is due to take place this evening. Beforehand we go to Yotam Ottolenghi’s restaurant on Pavilion Road. Simply excellent.
The first time we took the theatre into a museum was with FROST in 2009. It was with that project that my collaboration with the sound designer and live electrical engineer Wolfgang Musil began. We have been following and fine-tuning that approach ever since, defining acoustic spaces in the respective architecture – whether a museum, gallery or theatre – as an essential stylistic component of our work. Musil himself describes his role in our collaborations as that of an ‘acoustic stage designer’.
SHADOW. Eurydice says was the first performance of a text by Elfriede Jelinek in Albania. After my staging of the piece in Vienna in 2016/2017 and the English-language solo in London, New York and Washington in 2022/2023, this was yet another new production of SHADOW with an adapted version of the text – with Albana Kocaj, Flobensa Bezati and Adriana Tolka at the Teatri Eksperimental ‘Kujtim Spahivogli’ in Tirana, in English (translated by Gitta Honegger) with Albanian subtitles. That meant it was the first time that SHADOW was to be performed in a theatre.
SHADOW. Eurydice says was the first performance of a text by Elfriede Jelinek in Albania. After my staging of the piece in Vienna in 2016/2017 and the English-language solo in London, New York and Washington in 2022/2023, this was yet another new production of SHADOW with an adapted version of the text – with Albana Kocaj, Flobensa Bezati and Adriana Tolka at the Teatri Eksperimental ‘Kujtim Spahivogli’ in Tirana, in English (translated by Gitta Honegger) with Albanian subtitles. That meant it was the first time that SHADOW was to be performed in a theatre.
The first time we took the theatre into a museum was with FROST in 2009. It was with that project that my collaboration with the sound designer and live electrical engineer Wolfgang Musil began. We have been following and fine-tuning that approach ever since, defining acoustic spaces in the respective architecture – whether a museum, gallery or theatre – as an essential stylistic component of our work. Musil himself describes his role in our collaborations as that of an ‘acoustic stage designer’.
Under the cloak of darkness, the diggers advanced on the Albanian National Theatre in Tirana to tear down its façade. 1,500 police officers stormed the building on Sunday morning at around 4.30 a.m., using tear gas and arresting 20 of the theatre’s occupiers.
The 200th anniversary of Kleist’s death in late November and my general interest in working with the performer Barbara Kraus inspired me to finally get around to spending some time on my favourite author, the exhilarating Kleist, his “cheerful” suicide, his longing for Vienna, his resistance. Uncompromising, he never could resign himself to the way things were – resisting, ever resolute when it came to prevailing conditions – that’s what we’re all interested in and ultimately what brought us all together: the performer Barbara Kraus and myself, the “theatre” director, supported by a critical dramaturge and a diligent assistant.
7 Oct 22 – Friday
Arrival at London Heathrow: after a great and intensive rehearsal period in the Waldviertel, Lower Austria, during the summer, Alexandra Sommerfeld and I arrive in London on Friday, 7 October at the invitation of the Austrian Cultural Forum ACF. The premiere of Shadow. Eurydice says was originally planned for the autumn of 2021, but due to Covid it ended up being postponed several times …
The first rehearsal on-site is due to take place this evening. Beforehand we go to Yotam Ottolenghi’s restaurant on Pavilion Road. Simply excellent.
Despite police brutality resulting in several injured protesters, a group of Albanian artists and intellectuals succeeded in occupying the Albanian National Theatre, which is currently under threat of demolition, in the centre of the capital Tirana on Wednesday morning, as the Alliance to Protect the Theatre (Aleancapër mbrojtjen e Teatrit) reported that afternoon.