2011 November 23rd
world premiere "You never know"
New music theatre about ANGST
A productionby and with Cornelia Melian (voice), Micro Opera München
Music: Ernst Bechert
world premiere: 23.9. 2011 at 8.30 p.m.
24.9. at 8.30 p.m. and 10.30 p.m., 25. 9 at 3 p.m. and 8.30 p.m,
SChwere Reiter Munich, Dachauerstr. 114
Musical direction/sampler/keyboards: Ernst Bechert
Scenic realisation: Martina Veh
Text/Dramaturgy: Katrin Dollinger
Set design: Robert Kis
Lighting: Wieland Müller-Haslinger
Photos: Regine Heiland
With: Mathis Mayr (cello), Thomas Simmerl (percussion), Anton Kaun, Rumpeln (video)
Security sells! An entire industry thrives on insuring its clientele against all the risks of life that can be expected. A surreal cabinet of horrors that musically exaggerates and refracts the everyday insecurity in the modern meritocracy.
About the play:
The feeling of the uncanny testifies to intellectual insecurity in the face of what is not trustworthy, arising from a climate of fear that is both general and very personal: the images of longing or cruelty set in where an ideal world, a security or certainty suffers its rupture. On the one hand, the images naturally recur on a level of reality beyond the everyday, on the other hand, they are hardly suitable for a comfortable escape. Not infrequently, an abyss lurks behind the surface into which one can plunge at any moment. The escape from a present-day reality, of which we can no longer judge its degree of truth, into an idyll, a fantasy of longing or into an aggressive overreaction in fantasies of cruelty.
The fantasies of the insurance employees are an expression of an ambivalent longing for intimacy and security with simultaneous knowledge of the unfulfillability of the same and the incompatibility of these moments in today's world. Nevertheless, there is a moment of the utopian, the attraction of an idea against reason and utility.
The episodes always remind us of something, but always tip the creepiness into laughter. They are trivial-bombastic dramas at the desk of an insurance clerk. In order to confront Grete A. again and again with her actual office reality, we use a deus ex machina: the telephone dun the computer Here she is brought back again and again by her boss or also by customers to her level of reality of the office... until the object telephone also takes on a life of its own....
It is quite easy in today's flood of information from terror warnings to economic crime and world food sins to global environmental catastrophes to lose one's head and seek salvation in the details. This is not an unknown phenomenon, as we know from the Biedermeier era, for example.
It is a good time for the insurance companies and reinsurers. The business with fear is booming: on offer are policies against unemployment, poverty, social decline, illness, natural disasters, accidental death, fear of failure, fear of heights, claustrophobia, fear of large animals, fear of small animals, fear of large plants, fear of small plants, mould, bacteria, viruses and dirt (also political dirt), fear of blemishes, hair loss, orange peel skin, flabby belly, skin blemishes in general, fear of exams, stage fright and much more.
In our project MAN CAN NEVER KNOW there is one person who manages the cabinet of our fears: The insurance clerk Grete A. She carefully archives the policyholders' protection letters in her cabinet. She monitors the timely receipt of premium payments and checks the premiums in the event of an insurance claim. Grete A. is a competent and reliable professional employee. The daily madness and pressure of having to sell more and more policies, a demanding boss who controls her office routine via telephone, dissatisfied customers and a general climate of fear drive her to the brink of a nervous breakdown.
No wonder Grete A. takes refuge in a fairytale world full of dwarfs and magical creatures and dreams herself out of the increasingly threatening world between the pressure of her boss and the daily bad news from the media into a fabulous parallel world.fantasy and experience become blurred. The fairy-tale characters spring from the experiences of her everyday office life. The office desk mutates into a "Punch and Judy show", the files, the shredder, the wastepaper basket and the office plants as well as all Grete A.'s personal knick-knacks develop a life of their own and become play figures in her world.
A production of Micro Oper Munich
Supported by: City of Munich, Department of Culture, Schwere Reiter dance/theatre/music, Performing Arts Fund e.V., Bavarian Music Fund Foundation
