Chanukah I – A Prologue (2023)
The evening begins with a low, melodic hum.
Two players and four musicians enter the stage. Seated at separate tables, the players begin to share a dialogue already in progress – ‚Somewhere in Time‘. The original text, presented in German and English, is arranged into nine pieces, the number of candles on the Chanukah menorah. Each piece unfolds new details as we roam across a century, through the past, present and future. Dates, locations, and themes are marked – from 1924 to 2031, somewhere between Duisburg, Amsterdam, and New York. Memories emerge from the fog. We learn of resignation and possible hope. Overlapping paths are discovered as well as near misses in space, time, and thought.
With a lightness that never betrays the gravity of the themes, the players deal with questions of resentment, resistance, reconciliation, self-assertion, and the significance of survival from the perspective of a ‚third generation‘. The possibility of a future theatrical form already begins to shine through. The music, not intended here as filler, shapes temporal surfaces, folds spaces, uses dissonance to make contradictions and frictions sensuously tangible, or enters the world as a simple song expressing joy and sorrow, resistance or remembrance. In the ninth and final piece, ‚The Shamash‘, the two players finally describe the photograph on which the story is built, sharing lines in their respective languages. It is also the story of their first encounter in Paris nearly twenty years ago. It becomes clear that the evening itself is another beginning to an ongoing story. The initial humming has intensified, turning into a prelude. Minor becomes major. The evening has formed into a prologue that foreshadows what is to come.
With Chanukah I, the public is invited to enter the ruins of a celebration where music and text create a soundscape as delicate as it is powerful. Where appropriate, the evening will not avoid humor. It does not, however, seek a simple reconciliation with the existing. Sometimes there are latkes.
Chapters: I – Somewhere in Time II – Letter from the Future III – Fog of Memory IV – Historischer Materialismus V – Stuff of Legends VI – A Toast VII – Jewess VIII– Twenty-Twenty-Three IX – The Shamash
With: Kate Hannah Weinrieb (text, speaker) Eleonora Savini (violin) Thorsten Müller (clarinet) Brueder Selke (cello, piano, ambient sound) Sebastian Weise (text, speaker) Sound Technician: Lukas Pirl Motif/Etching: Holger Podßuweit Production: Libertalia e.V. (2023) with the kind support of the City of Potsdam
Libertalia e.V. 