vampires of the 21st century or what is to be done then?

Director Claudia Bosse and her company theatercombinat show the next stage of their project vampires of the 21st century or what is to be done then? – a choreographic performance dealing with identity, political visions, violence and economy. After the premiers in Dusseldorf and Vienna they are developing and presenting an American version of the performance with new documentary materials and interviews about capitalism, identity and political positions around democracy and terrorism.

A theatre piece as an acoustic installation, an in- and out-door version around The Watermill Center where four performers from four nations enter into a bewildering, dislocating communication together with ten loudspeakers to create an imaginary dialogue with the audience.

Coming from an artistic background deeply rooted in the theatrical visions of Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Müller and the radically contemporary post-dramatic collage writing of Elfriede Jelinek, theatercombinat has been heavily engaged in choreographies of the space and public interventions. Here, the artistic methods of this new format of choreographic performance are inspired by Jean Luc Godard and Rainer Werner Fassbinder and question and re-define the concept of theatre and the practice of political aesthetics in the performing arts.

The composition is comprised of sound documents, choreography, autofictions and text fragments by Seneca, Marx, Baudrilliard and others. theatercombinat has also initiated dialogues with the surrounding Water Mill community to contribute to the audio archive of over 1000 documents. The format is an answer to the experiments of Jean Luc Godard and Rainer Werner Fassbinder–to question the contemporary practice of the political aesthetics in the performing arts.

Concept/Direction: Claudia Bosse
Sound: Guenther Auer
A performance with/by: Caroline Decker (GER), Frédréric Leidgens (FR/BEL), Yoshie Maruoka (AUS/J), Nora Steinig (CH)
Asssitant Director: Thomas Köck
Production Management: Annelie Fritze
Performance Translator: Tom Blake (US)
Production: theatercombinat

theatercombinat

Coming from an artistic background deeply rooted in the theatrical visions of Bertold Brecht, Heiner Müller and the radical post-dramatic collage writing of Elfriede Jelinek, the works of artistic director Claudia Bosse, a graduate of Berlin´s renowned Ernst Busch School of Dramatic Arts, are famous for their spectacular and radically diversified approaches to performance, theatre and space. Theatercombinat´s theatrical series “producing tragedy”, included i.e. a staging of “the persians” (Aeschylus) with a chorus of 340 citizen of Braunschweig on the stage of the National Theatre, “turn terror into sport” (Shakespeare) with 100 participants tap dancing in public space in the historical centre of Vienna, “phèdre” by Seneca/Racine in French language, staged as a choreography of naked bodies with actors around 60 years of age at the theatre GRÜ/théâtre du grütli, Geneve, or the award winning urban composition “bambiland” with a text by Literature Nobelist Elfriede Jelinek that filled up Vienna with a chorus of 12 moving loudspeakers.

Since 2010, Bosse has been working with sound artist Guenther Auer on research into political theatre hybrids based on speech- text- and sound-readymades and autofiction. Currently she participated in the project “Pieces of movement for orchestra” by Tanzquatier Vienna with the Radio Symphonic orchestra. In June she will be showing the urban intervention “the tears of stalin” at “Intersection – Prague´s quadrennial for performance, design and space”.