work
in
progress
work
in
progress
With
text
dramaturgy
stage
costumes
With
text
dramaturgy
stage
costumes
europe is disappearing...
... is a questioning of the myth, is a utopian Eurovision, is theater and art installation and also a sensual search for a Europe that never was, is not and perhaps never will be. Equipped with headphones, the audience experiences an audio-visual performance together and yet individually for 70 intense minutes, with the voices of the new ensemble up close and intimate. Their bodies do not appear during the pandemic. Almost.
Premiere on October 2, 2021 | Schauspiel Dortmund
What do we associate with the term “Europe”? The EU? The annual Eurovision Song Contest?
In Greek mythology, the king's daughter Europa is abducted by the father of the gods Zeus - who takes the form of a white bull - across the Mediterranean to Crete. "Europa and the bull" are symbolic in art, history, and stories about the supposed identity of the continent of Europe. But what if everything had turned out differently? Perhaps it had never happened? Or if completely different stories, images, and bodies had taken up the space?
Created in response to Miroslava Svolikova's piece "Europe Flees to Europe" and inspired by the current situation. A diorama becomes a space of possibilities, an object of search: for motifs, ideas and designs; becomes a reflection on physicality; a place of shared presence and the discovery of one's own images and ideas. Who can be imagined at all? Who is seen and heard? And who is not?
Press
It is the most open project of the season opening, a collective reflection in images and texts: about a fictitious new solidarity "Eurovision Song Contest"; about looks and bodies on stages, about bourgeois understanding of art and of course about the story of Europe and the bull, an act of sexualized violence that bizarrely holds up as the founding myth of a community of states.
Theater heute
Very beautiful (...) when Raphael Westermeier, as a museum visitor, walks through the diorama - which has now been deliberately demolished - and we hear an art historian's description of the stage set that has become a work of art through headphones. Since the audience is also described as part of the installation, the next meta-level is reached.
This setting is confusing at first, but it reaches moments of great poetic intensity. You don't always want to look at an empty stage in isolation with headphones on. But this time, as an exception to the rule, it does have its charm."
An installation for the eyes and ears.
Ruhr Nachrichten
Texts by Marlena Keil, Tucké Royale, Isabella Sedlak, Rebecca Solnit, Miroslava Svolnikova, Raphael Westermeier
Directed by Isabella Sedlak
with voices from
Lola Fuchs
Christopher Heisler
Marlena Keil
Sarah Yawa Quarshie
Mervan Ürkmez
Raphael Westermeier
Live on stage
Raphael Westermeier
Visual Design, Stage, Video Nicole Marianna Wytyczak
Dramaturgy Christopher-Fares Köhler
Sound Design Gerrit Netzlaff
Light Stefan Gimbel
Sound Robin Lockhardt
Assistant Director Azeret Koua
Scene photography Birgit Hupfeld
Credits