2023-09-22 10:00:50
Slasher horror by Constanza Macras at the Volksbühne
The subgenre of horror cinema is so-called slasher films in which teenagers have to contend with monsters and other nasty creatures without expecting help from their parents. It is not clear for whom the identification is more horrific: teenagers or their parents. With “The Vistors”, the Argentinian choreographer Constanza Macras continues the collaboration between her DorkyPark company and many of the young South African actors from her successful show “Hillbrowfication” from 2018 and is now making a guest appearance at the Volksbühne.
“The Visitors” by Constanza Macras performs at the VolksbühneManuel Osterholt
The motifs of the genre offer the opportunity for surprisingly humorous associations and Macras’ typically non-linear narrative style. On the other hand, they refer very specifically to a generational trauma that has to do with orphaning and separation: apartheid in South Africa with its, according to the announcement, “state-orchestrated destruction of family structures”. Macra’s revolutionary theater gives courage and a good mood when it comes to self-empowerment in the fight against the beasts of oppression and discrimination. This energy is legendarily infectious and leaves a trail of solidarity behind it. Ulrich Seidler
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The Visitors September 22nd, 23rd, 24th in the Volksbühne, tickets and information on Tel.: 24065777 or www.volksbuehne.berlin
Performance based on a Tokarczuk novel in the Zion Church
The novel “Last Stories” by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk is about three women: Parka, her daughter Ida and her daughter Maja. Grandmother, mother and granddaughter are all at a critical turning point in their lives that has to do with death. Tokarczuk brings together her experiences with the distant death of the strange other, the near death of the beloved partner and her own death in a kind of death fugue for three voices.
The theater maker Elzbieta Bednarska, who commutes between Poland and Germany, transforms the structurally exciting and emotionally gripping novel not into a play, but into a “performative journey,” as it is called. What does death, the news of death, this crossing of the border from existence to non-existence do to us, the living, the relatives? Bednarska sees this as a deeply repressed question about the meaning of life. It doesn’t consist in survival, but in the art of dying that needs to be learned. And she quotes from Tokarczuk’s novel: “How can people observe themselves? Who is looking in them, and at whom? What is really that which calls itself ‘I’, the looking or the observed?”
Woman in distress: Anna von Schrottenberg in the production by Petra Korink
In the production, she brings together various arts in a physical, vocal, musical and philosophically researching approach. Drama, music, singing and movement also correspond to the architecture of the Zion Church, this body of light and sound. Cornelia Geissler
The pure land. Director: Elzbieta Bednarska, acting/singing: Anna von Schrottenberg. Premiere on Friday, September 22nd, 8 p.m. Further performances: 23rd, 29th and 30th 9th Zion Church
Concert: James Blake at UFO in the Velodrome
James Blake has inscribed his very own sound (trained on the classical piano, but also equipped with electro DJ skills and a diploma from the top London university Goldsmiths) into the sound DNA of the 1900s like no other; so much so that the other big sound trendsetters of the time (Beyoncé, Frank Ocean, Bon Iver, Kanye West) all sought advice from him and invited him to their studio.
When you ask him whether he’s afraid of having to reinvent himself in order to remain unique, now that half the music world is buying ideas from him, he makes a comparison with Billie Eilish: “The radio sounds like Billie Eilish at the moment,” he says. “So many singers have these dry, soft, very forward vocals before electronic production. A lot of people do that Billie Eilish thing. But to be honest: no one is as good as her. If you want to hear Billie Eilish, it’s best to listen to Billie Eilish.” Conversely, this probably means: If you want Blake, it’s still best to listen to Blake – and not the epigones. Touché! And with his new record, Playing Robots into Heaven, freshly pressed, Blake conveniently lands at UFO at the Velodrome this weekend. Do not miss! Stefan Hochgesand
UFO im Velodrom Paul-Heyse-Straße 26, Sunday, September 24th, 8 p.m., pre-sale 69 euros
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