Théâtre Vidy,
Lausanne

STIFTERS DINGE / STIFTER'S THINGS

Stifter’s Things is a composition for five pianos with no pianists, a play with no actors, a performance without performers – one might call it a no-man show. First and foremost, it is an invitation to audiences to enter a fascinating space full of sounds and images, an invitation to see and hear. It revolves around awareness of things, things that in the theatre are often part of the set or act as props and play a merely illustrative role. Here they become protagonists: light, pictures, murmurs, sounds, voices, wind and mist, water and ice.

As the title suggests, this work touches on the texts of Adalbert Stifter, an early 19th century romantic author, whose reputation as a Biedermeier artist is misleading. Stifter writes with the same eye for detail as an artist paints and if the plots of his stories appear to mark time because of the painstaking (and at first sight, boring) descriptions of natural history, it is but proof of his respect for Things: such passages force the reader to slow down and become aware of each detail – it is as if the one wishing to approach the text first has to make their way through the forest on their quest. Things and matter tell their own story, whereas the characters are often just poked into the weave and are in no way sovereign subjects of their stories. The contemporary and radical aspects of Stifter’s work show through the deliberate slowing down and ritualized repetitions and are of particular significance to a contemporary reader.

Stifter’s Things was inspired by this author’s writing process, without seeking to stage his stories or the objects he described. The performance/installation (lasting about 80 minutes) takes his text as a confrontation with the unknown and the forces that man does not master, as a plea for the readiness to adopt other criteria and judgments than our own and even as an opportunity to come to terms with unfamiliar cultural references, particularly in the domain of ecological disasters, which Stifter already envisaged with his usual eye for detail.

Heiner Goebbels, composer and director, was born in 1952 and lives in Frankfurt am Main (Germany). Goebbels is among the most important exponents of the contemporary music and theatre scene. His compositions for ensembles and big orchestras as well as several of his music theatre works and staged concerts are being performed worldwide and mostly produced by Théâtre Vidy Lausanne and the Ensemble Modern. Heiner Goebbels works as a professor at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen (Germany) and is the president of the Theatre Academy Hessen.

The music theatre productions Max Black, Hashirigaki, Eraritjaritjaka, Stifter’s Things and I Went To The House But Did Not Enter are in the repertoire of Théâtre Vidy. Schwarz auf Weiss, Eislermaterial and Landschaft mit entfernten Verwandten are still in the repertoire of the Ensemble Modern. The London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra in the Age of Enlightenment perform Songs of Wars I Have Seen and the Ensemble Klang (N) performs an ensemble version of Walden.