Back in 2003 I initiated as a director a theatre project - it was Sophocles „Antigone“.
It was a Chinese-German collaboration, all the actors have been Chinese students, who had just started to live in Germany at this time. We worked over a period of 3 months, the 6 actors did never see each other during the rehearsals. We spent almost all the time with single face-to-face rehearsals, so most of the time I was reading the relevant texts for each role together with its actor, what first was a language task – the choosen translation was German – and second always became a discussion about art, culture and philosophy.
Everybody was invited to place anything during the rehearsal, what came in his/her mind, related to the rehearsed text and the role, he/her had to play. This was the time, when I first got interested in the notion of „Interactivity“ - as an opposite to tragic subjectivism.
It was a Chinese-German collaboration, all the actors have been Chinese students, who had just started to live in Germany at this time. We worked over a period of 3 months, the 6 actors did never see each other during the rehearsals. We spent almost all the time with single face-to-face rehearsals, so most of the time I was reading the relevant texts for each role together with its actor, what first was a language task – the choosen translation was German – and second always became a discussion about art, culture and philosophy.
Everybody was invited to place anything during the rehearsal, what came in his/her mind, related to the rehearsed text and the role, he/her had to play. This was the time, when I first got interested in the notion of „Interactivity“ - as an opposite to tragic subjectivism.
The Greek Tragedy in general deals with the public realms. Its topic is the polis, first on the layer of the text, but second also on the layer of its performance - in its genesis in religion, in its „production“ in the Athenian political „phyle“-system, and finally in its presentation in the (openair) theatre, still integrated in religious ceremonies and political demonstrations.
Antigone in particular served in Europe over centuries as a layer to talk about art and its possibility.
For me the strangest difference between the pilosophical texts of Greek tragedy and classical Chinese texts always has been the missing of the „Ereignis“ in the later. Indeed, it seems, that classical chinese aesthetics and philosophy even aims to bypass its occurence, while it animates to read the space, the environment, the relations – the dispositive.
Antigone in particular served in Europe over centuries as a layer to talk about art and its possibility.
For me the strangest difference between the pilosophical texts of Greek tragedy and classical Chinese texts always has been the missing of the „Ereignis“ in the later. Indeed, it seems, that classical chinese aesthetics and philosophy even aims to bypass its occurence, while it animates to read the space, the environment, the relations – the dispositive.
"The value of detour lies in its capacity for unfolding. By deploying a succession of phrases... it gradually opens up reality; and the continous concatenation to which it gives rise enables us, by accompanying it, to immerse ourselves in it: not to seize hold of it all at once, as direct expression purports to do, but gradually to become imbued with it..."
Francois Jullien
Performer: Sijia Liu, Zhiqi Xie, Tian Xia, Feifei Li, Haijie Hu, Weian Xiang
Directing: Tobias Rosenberger;
Stagedesign: Kriss Merken; Sound: Simon Schäfer; Light: Christian Flierl
Festival Junger Talente 2003