It seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn
It looks like it's a dyin' an' it's hardly been born
Bob Dylan, 1962
In the early days of American Vaudeville the world was still in order and reality was a live show taking place onstage. The transition to celluloid establishing a reality larger than life changed the perspective, and once the talking film entered the scene – as one of the most promising visionary formats of the time – the United States fell straight into the “Great Depression.” At the height of the Depression in 1929, Kafka wrote: “I’m quite fond of Americans. They’re in good health and full of optimism.” In 1987, in the midst of the Reagan era, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote about the land of unlimited smiles: “All Americans have impeccable teeth and dentures compensating for the lack of identity.” Fancy these Americans! Growing up in prospering post-war Germany, the young Ulli Lommel was dreaming of a better and freer world: “I would spend days at the port of Bremerhaven where the huge ocean liners left for America, the land of hope and glory, where the daily weather forecast was being chanted by a wonderful female voice and a woman like Marilyn could become a legend; it was the land where JFK and Elvis lived, and I knew I had to go there too, one day. But after the Vietnam war started and the Kennedys and Martin Luther King got killed, I gave up all my dreams and resolved never to set foot on American soil. However, things turned out differently.” The subcontinent between the city of New York and the state of California became his beloved one - Ms. Erika Amerika. It was hard to resist this dazzling and glamorous whore and warrior, daughter, mother and lover all at once, as tempting as it was to strive for happiness living the most ideal of states and political systems. Over the past decades of the last century, the material, political and sexual dimensions of freedom have expanded on an almost obscene scale in Erika A.’s life. Have we reached an endpoint here? Or is post-9/11 America in its excessive regulatory zeal, homeland security control and self-glorification simply an improved version of the former GDR? It could be the beginning …
Ladies & Gentlemen! … This is a Vaudeville show! Duck hunting in America! The world in 3D!! Including films, live music, apt quotations, icons of popular culture and a Punch-and-Judy show! A flight to the Planet of the Apes touching down in New Mexico where the Mescalero apaches live. 3D glasses are provided.
With: Kathrin Angerer, Maximilian Brauer, Bernhard Schütz, Jeanette Spassova, Volker Spengler, Lilith Stangenberg, Ulli Lommel, Frank Büttner, Isa-Bella Garcia, Alisha Lee, Kaddy Müller Sabbaly, Dupé Toyin Oshinowo, Fucking Famous (Band), Sophie Rois (Filmrolle), Irm Hermann (Filmrolle), Peter Berling (Filmrolle), Karla Kerschensteiner-Lommel (Filmrolle), Fritz Müller-Scherz (Filmrolle) and Tea Brown (Filmrolle)
Director: Ulli Lommel
Stage Designer: Bert Neumann
Costumes: Tabea Braun
Light Design: Voxi Bärenklau
Video: Frank Schönfelder
Dramaturgy: Henning Nass
