Freies Theater Bozen/Bolzano (Italy)

LANDSCAPE WITH ARGONAUTS

Festival Synenergy, Novi Sad/ Serbia, 28th of November 2019, 19:00 (duration 85′)

www.ftb.bz.it

Drama – 18 scenes

German language  (with english subtitles)

Duration: 85 min.

After more than 20 successful performances in Trentino – Alto Adige (North Italy), “Landscape with Argonauts” began to participate in international theatre festivals.

2015: Shanghai (China)

8th edition of „International Experimental Theatre Festival“ performance on the 22^nd of April

Duanjun Theatre

Wherever we have performed our “Argonauts”, critics and audiences praised the dedicated and passionate acting of the company. With great energy and physical exertion, the ensemble represents the texts, magnetised in strict images, in which poetry matches on strongest with drama.

ABOUT THE PLAY

And now you aren’t thinking about Heiner Müller (wasonce an inscription on the Berlin Wall)“Despoiled Shore” (1982/83), with the full title “DespoiledShore Medea Material Landscape with Argonauts”, is HeinerMueller´s contemporary version of the Medea-Jason-topic,but also much more. The topic is arranged as a triptych,showing people on the edge of the (ontic) collapse.In our version the “piece” has 18 scenes and is a full textcollage from the works of the most important Germandramatist since Brecht.

The landscape with argonautsrequires the disasters to which humanity operates. Thelandscape may be a dead star on which a search partyfrom another time that finds a dead.” We tell the story of3 men (or: the man). And of the woman (or: 3 women).Three Astro- Argo-nauts, on the planet of death (or life)in a past or future, in a world without or with women.“The collapse of the time constituted the myth. The mythis an aggregate, a machine that can be connected to thealways new and different equipment. He transports theenergy to the growing acceleration beyond the culturalsphere.

“In this sense we have the Jason myth, the Argonauts myth (the model of universal colonization of theworld), the Hercules myth (and his fight with the Hydra/woman) and the myth of the first modern (historical)man (as German philosopher Adorno said), Odysseus(deepened by the myth of Orpheus, the artist-intellectuals). These male myth- machines are like a countryside, adepraved shore, a “wasteland”, the ruins of history. Andthe woman who resurrects daily, after failing her dailydeath as his mistress, housewife, mother ..

The men, thelandscape and the women. Attempting to submit thetwo fails, is a misguided historical experiment. For Rambo, technocrat, doubters (Peculiar, macho, softie) returning to the planet is fatal.

DEATH TO THE PATRIARCHS

This play has captured the sinking of men. The conquerors stumble upon a battle of the genders and then theydie. What about remains: a ray of hope. Why is a story from the antiquity still interesting in 2014?

Because the nature of man has not changed much overtime. We re-edited the Greek narrative material on the “Argonauts “ and then made a modern staging. A groupof men embarks on the path to discover new areas. Asonce the Argonauts the “barbarians” did, they want toteach strange people about their views of the world. Thejourney brings them to a planet that is so devastatedthat it resembles a trash mountain. These are the legacies of previous conquests. The only people who still livethere are women. Between the genders, a conflict arises,that results in a battle of ideologies.

For the first time, thissmall group of men, don’t need to subdue the “natives”and their country to their methods. Their former character strengths turn to vulnerable weaknesses. The oppressors are themselves under the wheels, and the endof men sealed the end of the male view of the world aswell. As survivors only the women remain.All this is expressed in a very emotionally and in a peculiar style. It tried to produce not only images that can beseen but also those for the “ inner eye”.

These expressiveimages fixate the failures of the male ideology. The millennia persisting exploitation of the planet and its inhabitants is finally terminated by an everlasting resistance. An opportunity for the “despoiled shore” to start anew.