"Was haben Sie gegen Bauern, Gnädige Frau?"
DVD / 2014
Choregie event
music: 80 %
theatre: 20 %
genre: contemporary music for solo voices and electronic track
duration: 65 min
At the foot of the hill where my house sits, I step from my car and open the trunk. I take off the suit and my German shoes, rip the tie off my neck, the shirt off my breast, the buttons popping, and throw the alien clothes into the trunk. I see the stars of my motherland, they are brighter than those in Germany, there’s no smoke between me and the sky. (H. Müller)
Memories are the main protagonists, and voices from the past are the ones that lead us to unexpected effects where Time takes initiative for action.
Figures – farmer and women - speak from within their historical contexts to the present in an effect which creates a museum-like theatre of the dead.
German history and culture, its effects across the broader field of Europe:
Final days of WW2. Croatian SS Man, who looks to German officers widows "like a peasant", arrives and does the job for them with the peasant’s tool, an axe …
Imaginary accounts of the pain and suffering of modern German history:
Present time. Croatian soldier is now a guest worker in Germany, dressed in a suit, shirt and tie. He tells his story ...
Concept, music direction and stage design: Karmina Šilec
Music: Jacob Cooper
Text: Heiner Müller: Germania 3
Performing
Vilim Matula, actor
Carmina Slovenica, chamber ensemble
Jasmina Črnčič, Eva Germ, Mojca Potrč, Nina Pušenjak, Sara Ritonija, Ana Sandrin, Ana Studen, solo voices
Light design: Andrej Hajdinjak
Sound design: Danilo Ženko
From the Press
... cool, downbeat electronics ...
Feast of Music
... richly talented ...
The New York Times
... a maverick electronic song composer ...
The New Yorker
... subversive ...
The Village Voice
... a complex stage composition where it is possible to analyse a very real happening with all the symbolic and allusive subtones, or give yourself over to the totality of the performance and its hypnotic atmosphere. Created by the music, of course …
Delo newspaper
... Another example of Karmina Šilec’s well thought out approach to expressive possibilities of music theatre which presents relatively complex subject matters in a way that is suggestive enough, in case this form wants to pull out of the narrow exclusive circles and continue to convince those already convinced this seems to be the only way …
Delo newspaper
… the quality of image and sound as well as editing are on a surprisingly high level, the film recording even showed certain advantages, mostly ingenious positioning and focusing on the relevant details which usually remain hidden on the big picture …
Delo newspaper