“I’m waiting for my fucking life to decrypt”, exclaims a character in Pollesch’s play “Heidi Hoh doesn’t work here any longer” from 2000. The basic motif of Pollesch’s work is the perpetual attempt by all the performers to come to terms with an increasingly complex and unmanageable life world. The actor’s tirades neither reveal clear-cut characters nor follow a coherent narrative. Instead, the torrent of words jumps at breakneck speed from film quotations to social critique to philosophical theory from Agamben to Baudrillard. “My work,” says Pollesch, “forms in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the problems we are facing today, motivated by a desire for orientation, a desire to locate myself, and by the energies unleashed in this process.” The key topics are the ongoing economization of every single area of life, the privatization of the public sphere, the fading concepts of the bourgeois family and the middle-classes, and not least the disintegration of the human subject in the media age.
The Ruhr Trilogy is a long-term open-air performance project where the urban landscapes of the Ruhr area play a prominent role. “And yet it is precisely this theatrical appropriation of cinematic elements (or the cinematic realization of the theatre performance) that provides a substantial, ironic subtext to the theory-laden “Cinecittà Aperta”. The performers are great and contribute significantly to the fun. Martin Laberenz bowls in slow-motion across a very slow-driving car in flawless stuntman-style.(…)Christine Groß as film director heads off to the set and can’t find the revolving stage (…) And when the stars have their hair coiffed in the vanity van, a man from the local electricity supplier suddenly arrives, and the rest of them must take a cold shower.” (adapted from nachtkritik.de, online review of “Cinecittà Aperta”)
With: Fabian Hinrichs and Volker Spengler
Director: René Pollesch
Stage Designer: Bert Neumann
Costumes: Nina von Mechow
Video: Ute Schall
Light Design: Frank Novak
Dramaturgy: Aenne Quiñones
A co-production of the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin with the Ringlokschuppen Mülheim an der Ruhr and the European Culture Capital RUHR.2010, in collaboration with the Project Agency Kultur an der Ruhr (Mülheim City Jubilee) and the Theatre Department of the Mülheim an der Ruhr Cultural Agency, with the kind support of the NRW Art Foundation an the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Theater Instituut Nederland and the SMW GmbH.
