Zafraan Ensemble is part of a new piece by the legendary Rimini Protocol! A piece about disappearance and loss music by Barbara Morgenstern in collaboration with the Zafraan Ensemble premieres on December 16th, 2021 at 7 p.m. at HAU 1.
Tickets: Here
The theater is the place of visualization, presence and liveness. Every stage event is permeated with liveliness. The audience can make sure, second by second: These bodies on the stage are there for me, this voice speaks to me – now, in this moment. But: What happens to the theater when the naturalness of human presence disappears for a performance? What’s left then? The Malaysia Airlines international passenger plane MH370 suddenly disappeared from radar on March 8, 2014 with 227 passengers and 12 crew members. His disappearance has been called one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time – because it seems incredible that something so big could go missing in a world where everything and everyone is believed to be under surveillance. Shortly after the plane disappeared, the author and director’s father wrote four letters congratulating his grandson on his birthday. The content is almost identical; Each envelope is franked with a special stamp. A year later there is no card at all, the birthday was probably forgotten and at some point this forgetfulness gets a name and becomes an illness: dementia. In “All right. Goodnight.” Helgard Haug traces the disappearance, the search and the struggle with uncertainty – using the example of the missing plane and the manifesting dementia of her own father. It is the record of an irreversible process.
As an artistic medium, music has a great tradition of making what has disappeared tangible. Be it through a requiem to commemorate the deceased or through a choir that already acted as a chronicler in the ancient theater and reported on battles and divine decrees that were hard to imagine. For “All right. Goodnight.” The electro-pop musician Barbara Morgenstern is composing for a chamber ensemble for the first time in collaboration with the arranger Davor Vincze.
What’s left? Just thoughts and memories? The naked theater apparatus? The music?