Werk 2 HIMALAYA and Werk 7 SPEICHER

In cooperation with the Werkraum Karlsruhe and the Schauspiel Staatstheater Stuttgart, the ZKM will show the monodramas »HIMALAYA« and »SPEICHER« by Christopher Maas. With these two pieces, the author and director turns to the problem of the individual in postmodern society. The hero’s world in the ballad »HIMALAYA« is cold, lonely, highly dynamic—and in the end, unreal. He doesn’t feel it and it doesn’t feel him. He comes from a well-off family and walks through life on precut paths. He goes to school, studies, graduates, marries, and begins his career in upper management. He never left the sofa on which he phlegmatically let his youth pass by– »surrounded by wood-chip wallpaper, grand, like the Himalaya.« Nothing tempts or frightens our hero from this cocoon. On the contrary, at the center of »SPEICHER« is the story of a person who grows up without any family ties whatsoever. Based on outer circumstances she constantly reinvents them: her origins, her past, her history. Her life becomes a story subject to constant revision. Emerging are fragmented, episodic memories of things that occurred and things that never occurred. The integration of episodic memories in a sensible continuum is a necessary show of strength that requires creativity. Perhaps this act of integration is the beginning of art?

With Jannek Petri and Bernd Gnann, Music Schneider TM, design: Simone Manthey