Orfeo – eine Sterbeübung

Orpheus and Eurydice: the first artistic couple, he is the survivor, she is the victim. He transforms pain into art. She is silent and dies. Orpheus journeys into the netherworld down to Eurydice to bring her back to life, his life. Euridyce is stunned. – Up until now it has always been about Orpheus. Nobody had ever seriously asked Eurydice if she actually wanted to go back with him, to him.

Orfeo directed by Susanne Kennedy, Suzan Boogaerdt and Bianca van der Schoot will be presented as a series of spaces through which the audience is led in small groups. These rooms are stations of Orpheus’ descent and his attempt to win his lover back for himself. The artists counter the visual power of the labyrinthine Mischanlage in Essen’s Kokerei Zollverein with an aesthetic of virtual desire: a world reminiscent of the computer game SimCity. Limbo takes the form of banal everyday routine.

Musically, this creation is a departure from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. Excerpts of the original score will be played over each other or at tiny periodic intervals. Extant musical material will be reworked and performed by the Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop using collage, looping and sampling techniques.

In this environment members of the audience will become witnesses of Orfeo’s journey through the realm of spirits, of the half-dead. Euridyce will not be played by one but by several actresses. She has no tangible shape, she appears in various forms. The characters are trapped in a shell, in an artificial, enforced identity with which they can never be comfortable. Their souls are buried deep inside.