NO CROWDING ANGLE, BURGTHEATER WIEN 1997
“Behind the glossy curtain was a big box made of inconspicuous material, brown hard fiber. Already at Räuber the stage protruded from the stage area like a box, with undisguised side walls, but strictly speaking this is the first of all my freestanding boxes. It stood on the turntable and showed again and again the backside with all the complicated wiring. Inside the box were thousands of rumbling lights, and when the lights came on, the box glowed. The lamps created a tremendous temperature, it was not easy for the actors to play in it, but it was good for the play, it looked like an incubator”.
BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, SCHAUSPIELHAUS ZURICH 2001
“The great attraction of this work was the fact that shipbuilding in Zurich is actually a hall and not a theater. Light enters the hall through the windows, the outside light mixed with the theater light. The floor could carry loads so that a car could drive through and one could work with heavy containers that could only be lifted in by a crane and which no stage floor would be able to withstand. Döblin describes Berlin as a construction site, an experience that can certainly be understood. A city that will never be finished, a continuous provisional solution. Walking across Alexanderplatz today, one recognizes the Berlin of the novel in the refusal to become a metropolis, despite socialist urban planning. There are Russian announcements in the department store, and the pubs are defiantly chic and have names like: The Tuber. Döblin describes being exposed on the streets of the big city, you look into illuminated windows, but you do not belong and are not allowed to enter. The only place where encounters can take place is the pub. The containers are rather isolated living spaces, in which the scenes could only be seen in excerpts. Downstairs there was the entertainment area with red carnival lights. And a walkable roof. The spectators sat in front of it on a length of 50 meters, that means everybody saw something different. The play is very long, at the premiere the hall emptied and then the spectators in the middle slid together and sat in this red carnival light. There was something conspiratorial about it”.