Six protagonists find themselves in a cabin – or is it a shelter? A bunker? – literally clinging to the summit of a mountain. They speak Italian, German, (Scottish) English, and French – will they even be able to understand each other? While they research, they sing. It seems as if they are preparing a summit at the summit.
Christoph Marthaler’s productions often begin with groups of people who find themselves in stressful, uncertain, and often confusing situations. The members of these groups organize themselves as best they can – but this is rarely efficient, and there is often indecision. There are ideas – and then there is the reality of life. And the two do not always fit together… or do they?
Does this sound familiar? Ordinary life consists of improvised experiments and paradoxes that seem insignificant at first glance – and yet can change the course of things.
So they sing up there, high up, as well as they can. And sometimes a spark flickers between them. But what is this spark? Without cynicism, but with enthusiasm and a beneficial distance that works, the answer seems – perhaps – to lie at the summit. Or maybe not.
At the Ruhrtriennale 2023, Artistic Director Barbara Frey presented the staging of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s monologue “Notes from Underground” with Nina Hoss in the lead role as the conclusion of her tenure. The performances took place in the mixing plant at the UNESCO World Heritage Site Zollverein in Essen.
In this production, Nina Hoss embodies a nameless, embittered intellectual who has retreated into the isolation of an underground hole. His monologue reflects on the inadequacies of modern man, his own depravity, and the contradictions of existence. Dostoevsky’s text serves as a thematic and philosophical basis for his later great novels.
The staging utilized the unique atmosphere of the industrial architecture to emphasize the inner turmoil and existential questions of the protagonist. The audience traversed the mixing plant, past old rollers and rusty steel beams, before witnessing the intense monologue.
“Notes from Underground” was praised by critics for its compelling performance and the successful combination of text, space, and acting. The production was an outstanding contribution to the Ruhrtriennale and a worthy conclusion to Barbara Frey’s artistic directorship.
OPERA IN THREE ACTS
Libretto by the composer Leoš Janáček based on Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead
In the Siberian prison camp, there are no heroes. Whether poor or rich, educated or uneducated, noble or not – here everyone is equal and united in endless horror. Fyodor Dostoevsky experienced it and described it meticulously in his House of the Dead. They served as the basis for Leoš Janáček’s last opera, which appeals to our compassion under the motto “In every creature a spark of God”. Janáček, who derived his music from the individual speech of people, gives each inmate their own voice, only to let it drown in the polyphonic anonymity and indifference. Raw sounds and persistent rhythms make the harshness of camp reality almost physically palpable. In the vast dimensions of the Jahrhunderthalle, star director and set designer Dmitri Tcherniakov continues this idea: In a huge walk-in stage installation, he dissolves the protective separation between artists and audience. We inhabit a merciless prison world, inescapably arrested with all the “fateless” who eke out an existence as living dead here. With them, we move through a daily life marked by undignified brawls and drinking bouts. To us, his fellow prisoners, Luka describes up close how he stabbed the Major in revenge for his arbitrariness. Skuratov tells us how he shot the richer rival for his beloved Luisa. Šiškov tells us how he slit the throat of his innocent bride Akulina out of jealousy. Are we interested in their suffering, their anger, their remorse?
Deep within the Earth rests its memory. Composer Georges Aperghis and writer Jean-Christophe Bailly seek it out. An imaginary journey begins, descending through layered time. A constant companion is pitch-black darkness, primordial mother of fear and sleeplessness, but also of the oldest games and most bizarre fantasies. In interplay with fleeting, changeable animated drawings, five musicians bring the scenery to life through sound, word, and body: Together they dig through various materials into the darkness, feel their way through cavities, encounter childish fear fantasies, and surrender to distorted thought images that befall one during nocturnal wakefulness. The mine becomes a poetic place whose wealth of associations Aperghis and Bailly bring to light. The deeper we descend, the closer we come to the sky. 300 million years deep, we encounter coal. Bailly, who gives language to the Earth Factory with poetry by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and his own poems, calls it a “child of light”; after all, the black substance from the depths was once living vegetation that fed on sunlight. He finds this light of the sky again in the peculiarly cool shine of coal. Dark and light, seriousness and play, courage and fear, large and small – the combination of extreme poles, the interaction of inner contradictions
Barbara Frey, the directing artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale, describes Shakespeare’s ingenious and profound masterpiece A Midsummer Night’s Dream as “the play of the hour”, which has enchanted and confused audiences for more than 400 years. In this poetic natural phenomenon, all genre terms fail. The text changes its form, meanders through various genres from courtly play to coarse farce, from dream play to philosophical excursion, from comedy to tragedy. Nothing in this text retains its initial form. This is deeply unsettling. We are confronted with the imposition of unpredictability. We witness the characters’ loss of control, experience it ourselves, recognize the brutality of unreliable feelings, see how love fades and turns into contempt, and conversely, how ignorance is replaced…
What determines life more than the thought of its finitude? The small step over the threshold at the end – in truth an eternity. In his last work Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil – Four Songs to Cross the Threshold, composer Gérard Grisey first sends the angel over the ominous threshold, then civilization, the voice, and finally humanity. And each time, the membrane between life and death appears more permeable.
At the beginning of Schnitzler’s societal panorama, the music falls silent: A pianist who frequented the villa of light bulb manufacturer Friedrich Hofreiter and his wife Genia shoots himself. The reason for this gives rise to speculation. It is suspected that Hofreiter had asked the young musician to take his own life after learning of his alleged affair with Genia. But Hofreiter claims he would have had no problem with an affair. On the contrary: The “maker” and “founder” of serial production almost challenges Genia to be unfaithful. In his notes, Schnitzler, the physician and diagnostician of his time, sketches the further course in short, precise sentences: “His wife becomes dreadful to him, deadly. He can no longer possess her. Finally, he goes insane.”
With a sharp eye, Schnitzler dissects a society whose drive for expansion and thirst for pleasure take precedence: Friendships serve business relationships, and hotel chains are placed in the bare rocky landscape of the Dolomites to satisfy erotic desires. In this context, Hofreiter’s light bulbs seem like an ironic commentary on a supposedly enlightened and bright world. The conversations of the privileged society about affairs and love adventures become seismographs of a catastrophe that can no longer be stopped.
WHAT IS “D • I • E” ABOUT? ABOUT A WOMAN? ABOUT DYING? ABOUT GRAMMAR? ABOUT LINES, POINTS, AND CHARACTERS? ALL ANSWERS ARE CORRECT – AND ALL QUESTIONS ARE OBSOLETE.
IN A FANTASTICALLY SURREAL ORGY AT THE CHRISTMAS FEAST, THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN PRESENT AND PAST, LIVING AND DEAD, HUMAN AND ANIMAL, DESIRE AND REALITY BLUR.
As a renowned expert on nocturnal plants and homeless creatures of captivated fears, Barbara Frey, at the opening of her tenure as artistic director, delves into the thought cosmos of Edgar Allan Poe together with an eight-member, multilingual ensemble.
I work closely with directors, costume designers, producers, and actors/singers/dancers to conceptualize and define the desired look for each character.
Based on this, my team and I must be able to apply various makeup and hair techniques to achieve the desired look.
I handle the budget and personnel management of the makeup artist team.
In doing so, I ensure that resources and budget are used effectively and I monitor the team’s quality and working hours.
Additionally, I ensure compliance with safety regulations and hygiene standards for the use of makeup products.
Makeup artists and performers must have good personal chemistry. The right team composition enhances the preparation and application of makeup and hair.
From the artistic concept to the final implementation, I create masks and prosthetic pieces, perfectly tailored to the respective requirements.
I design and create makeup and hairstyle designs that emphasize the character’s personality and features and achieve the best possible effect, especially on stage.
With extensive knowledge of styles and implementation methods, I design and create perfectly matched wigs and hairpieces.
There will be another change in artistic direction in 2021: The artistic director for the Ruhrtriennale 2021 – 2023 is Barbara Frey, who, as a proven drama director, will open the festival herself in the Maschinenhalle Gladbeck with The Fall of the House of Usher.
As always, premieres in dance, music theater, performance and installations will follow throughout the Ruhr region. In the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum, this includes the music theater Bählamms Fest. The production by the Irish collective Dead Centre follows the oppressive story of a family’s life in the countryside with impressive images and surreal scenes. This premiere is accompanied by the opening of two new creative spaces on the same site. One is the festival library with book recommendations from the artists of the season and the other is the Pappelwaldkantine. Anyone who had already written off the poplars – once elevated to the status of a baroque garden – has been taught a much nicer lesson: with just a few resources, a previously inhospitable place has been transformed into a romantic meeting place.
For many visitors, A Divine Comedy by Florentina Holzinger is certainly one of the most moving performances of the season. A daring venture is taking place at the Kraftzentrale Duisburg: something bold and artistically elaborate is being dared there. Rarely has a female perspective on the world come to the Ruhrtriennale stage with so much power and imagination (to be honest, perhaps never before).
A gem of contemplative power takes place at the Museum Folkwang: The Life Work by Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen. It is touching to experience how four old Japanese women calmly act in micro-movements in an atmospherically dense space, while memories of their long lives are heard off-screen. Memories of growing up, in turn, are “exhibited” in the Turbinenhalle Bochum: In the video installation 21, Mats Staub portrays narrators as listeners of their own words. One of the few commissioned compositions of considerable length in the festival’s history is D • I • E by Michael Wertmüller. We take our seats on swivel chairs in the immediate vicinity of the conductor Titus Engel and surrounded by four groups of musicians. An experience of community that has become rare during the epidemic.
Source: RUHRTRIENNALE
