It was whispered that Herbert Fritsch’s production MURMEL MURMEL has pushed the art of theatre to a conclusive limit, and the small German-speaking theatre community have since asked themselves the big question: “What else could possibly follow?” If you asked Herbert Fritsch, what else was there to come, his answer would be: “I’ve got a few ideas. Music would be at the centre of the next project ... and acting, and the actors themselves ... all of my actors, of course ... and paintings!” Then he’d go on about paintings, raving about Malevich’s Black Square and Pollock’s works, waxing lyrical about Fontana and Rothko to go into a kind of ecstasy returning to Pollock.
And then he’d say that he always gets excited about things inarticulate, that he is attracted to the unspeakable and that which is beyond expression! Almost everything has been already thought and felt on the stage, he says, but has everything also been named? It doesn’t take language to communicate through music. Visual art needs no words. And theatre as an art does, likewise, not necessarily involve words, at least not in the sense of intellectual discourse, although it needs language. Fritsch’s first short film “Video Untitled” from 1983, he says, continues to be an inspiration for all his later works; the film shows him grinning for 17 long minutes. It sounds amusing and light-hearted and easy, but the performance gets out of control and his face turns into a brutal, hideous grimace. And finally he’d get to the point saying that he would like to create something of his own making for the Volksbühne, a theatre evening titled „UNTITLED NO.1“ combining everything that gives him a thrill. And just to avoid any misunderstanding he would add: “I’ll be doing an opera!” - and that’s what he’s done now.
Duration: 1h 30min
With: Florian Anderer, Matthias Buss, Nora Buzalka, Werner Eng, Patrick Güldenberg, Jonas Hien, Wolfram Koch, Inka Löwendorf, Annika Meier, Ruth Rosenfeld, Axel Wandtke, Hubert Wild, Ingo Günther, Fabrizio Tentoni and Michael Rowalska
Director: Herbert Fritsch
Stage Designer: Herbert Fritsch
Costumes: Victoria Behr
Light Design: Torsten König
Music: Ingo Günther, Herbert Fritsch
Video: Klaus Dobbrick, Konstantin Hapke
Dramaturgy: Sabrina Zwach
