Lichtung

Noise-Theater by and with Martin Heidegger

„Only a god can save us”, Heidegger said, when he was asked about the challenges modern technical societies were facing in 1966. Today, 50 years later, no god saved us yet. But two people are still sitting and waiting in their kitchen.
The performance is based on two materials. One is a philosophical dialog that Heidegger wrote in 1945 during the final phase of world war II. The other is the movie Koyaanisqatsi from 1982 directed by Godfrey Reggio. Both treat the same topic: the dangers of a technical view of the world. The main danger lays in the disregard of the “useless” which might be a free way of thinking. On stage we see a kitchen equipped with sensors and microphones that are connected to a modular synthesizer. During the biggest part of the play no word is spoken by the two performers while titles with short parts of Heideggers dialogs are projected above the stage. This quite abstract play gains its emotional impact by the naturalism of the stage design and the power of the soundtrack created live by the performers and a musician. It is a constant game of deconstruction until at the end of the play they start to speak Heideggers “evening conversation”. (“Abendgespräch in einem Kriegsgefangenenlager in Rußland zwischen einem Jüngeren und einem Älteren”). The conclusion they come to is that we have to learn to truly wait.

“Surprising twists are the structural principle of this performance. There are doubts as to whether the explorations of O-Team in the tension field between silence and sound, between pantomime and philosophical dialogue are really thought through to the last detail, or whether they are not, perhaps, above all just a great theater fun “Justification of the Critic Jury, Festival 6 Tage frei

Performer: Antje Töpfer und Folkert Dücker
Direction: Samuel Hof, set: Nina Malotta, music: Markus Birkle, dramaturgy: Jonas Zipf, sound/video: Pedro Pinto und Nils Meisel, production/graphic: Markus Niessner

April 2014, FITZ, Stuttgart,
July 2014, Theater Rampe, Stuttgart
April 2015, Critics Award of Stuttgarter Theatre Award
May 2015, 19th international. Figuren.theater.festival Erlangen
April 2016, Sophiensaele, Berlin
May 2016, Pathos, Munich
Nov 2016, Unidram Festival, Potsdam