Im Rausch der Stille (the cold skin)

In Piñol’s award-winning novel, a meteorologist goes to a research mission on a secluded island which, apart from his house, only contains one monumental lighthouse. Contrary to his expectations of idyllic loneliness and time to read the numerous books he brought, the narrator is attacked by a horde of amphibian-human hybrids in the first night already. He only survives with difficulty and luck. The meteorologist succeeds in convincing the lighthouse keeper, which is apparently mentally ill, to take him in. From now on the two men form a community of fate, accompanied by one of the “frog-beings”, a female who turns out to be their sex slave. She accompanies the nightly attacks of her fellow hybrids with beautiful singing. With gun and dynamite, the two men defend their lives. Soaked in gin, they stand the endless violence. In his self-understanding as an intellectual the protagonist describes what happens. In his diary, he tries to distinguish intellectually from his raw, uneducated fellow-combatant. And yet he himself is acting even worse.

Packed in an exciting horror story, Piñol tells of colonialism, machismo, war and human abysses. The educated narrator describes and justifies their actions as being necessary and correct. The difference between practice and self-perception, the ever more deliberate attempt by the protagonist to categorize his extreme situation and behaviour by means of language and signs, are at the center of the staging. The music of ANNAGEMINA performed live on stage is not an illustration of the plot. It stands for itself, independent and unaffected like the sea that surrounds the island.

2015, OST Stuttgart / Staatstheater Darmstadt, Kleines Haus

WITH
Folkert Dücker, Michael Fiedler, Anna Illenberger, Stefan Schuster

Samuel Hof (direction) Annagemina (music) Simon Meienreis (text / dramaturgy) Nina Malotta (outfits) Pedro Pinto (video) Alexander Joseph (light) Nils Meisel (sound) Markus Nießner (production, graphics, PR)

annagemina: annagemina.tumblr.com