Helgard Haug (Rimini Protokoll) with music by Barbara Morgenstern in collaboration with the Zafraan Ensemble
All right. Good Night. A Play about Disappearance and Loss
On 8 March 2014, Flight MH370 disappeared from all radar screens. That same year the director and writer’s father started to vanish into dementia. She presents both stories to the audience in a touching and poetic text to be read from projections. The only thing that can be heard is the playing of the musicians on stage.
PACT Zollverein, Essen
Language: German with English surtitles
14.06., 18:30–19:30: Talk with Helgard Haug, Katrin Tiedemann, Christine Wahl (in German)
The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has been described as one of the airplane biggest mysteries of all time. To this day only isolated pieces of wreckage have been found. Shortly afterwards the director’s father sent his grandson four birthday cards. The next year he did not send a single one. Later he would forget his grandson’s name, then the fact that he had a grandson and eventually certainty about his own identity. While one set of relatives searched for what was left of their father, the others have spent years calling the airline’s offices to ask if there is any news.
This text by Helgard Haug is an account of disappearance, of searching and of wrestling with uncertainty. Projected onto a transparent screen, the words are suspended about the musicians on stage. The music by Barbara Morgenstern is an attempt to write what we cannot grasp in musical form. Chords dissolve, becoming shrill and loud, rhythms shift, the bar line crumbles.
No one speaks.
What happens to the theatre when it tells its stories in silence? ALL RIGHT. GOOD NIGHT. is also a search for new stage forms.
Credits ›
Concept, text, direction: Helgard Haug
Composition: Barbara Morgenstern
Orchestra: Zafraan Ensemble
Hands: Johannes Benecke, Mia Rainprechter
Speakers: Emma Becker, Evi Filippou, Margot Gödrös, Ruth Reinecke, Mia Rainprechter, Louise Stölting
Stage design: Evi Bauer
Video and lighting design: Marc Jungreithmeier
Sound design: Peter Breitenbach
Conductor: Premil Petrović
Arranger: Davor Branimir Vincze
Dramaturgy: Juliane Männel
Outside eye: Aljoscha Begrich
Technical direction: Andreas Mihan
Researcher, assistant director: Lisa Homburger
Costumes and assistant stage designer: Christine Ruynat
Assistant sound designer: Rozenn Lièvre
Production management: Louise Stölting
Zafraan Ensemble musicians on stage: Matthias Badczong (clarinet), Evi Filippou (percussion), Josa Gerhard (violin), Martin Posegga (saxophone), Beltane Ruiz (double bass)
Production ›
A production by Rimini Apparat in co-production with PACT Zollverein, Essen, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Volkstheater Vienna, The Factory Manchester and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt am Main. Funded by grants from the Capital Cultural Fund and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. With thanks to Figurentheater Grashüpfer.
Biographies ›
Helgard Haug is a writer and director. She had been accepted for a place in Marine Biology but then chaged her mind to study Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. In 2002 she founded the theatre label Rimini Protokoll along with Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel. She frequently develops her stage plays, interventions, scenic installations and audio dramas with experts who have gained their knowledge and skills outside the theatre. She also likes to transpose spaces or social patterns into theatrical form. Many of her works are characterised by interactivity and a playful use of technology. Five of her productions have been invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen, most recently ALL RIGHT. GOOD NIGHT. When Helgard Haug was awarded the Mühlheim Playwriting Prize together with Daniel Wetzel in 2007 for ‘Karl Marx: Das Kapital. Volume One’, this sparked a wide-ranging debate about new forms of authorship and postdramatic theatre. Helgard Haug has also won several awards for her audio dramas, including the ARD Radio Drama Prize and the War Blind Prize for Audio Drama.
Barbara Morgenstern is an electronic musician, composer, producer and choral director. She has released her music since 1998, initially on the Berlin label Monika Enterprise, and, since 2018, on Staatsakt. Since 2007 she has run the “Chor der Kulturen der Welt” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, for which she composes, writes arrangements and devises the programme. She has worked consistently with Rimini Protokoll since 2012.
Zafraan stands for music that reflects all facets of contemporay life, contemporary society and contemporary reality. Interacting with other art forms, Zafraan observes, explores and processes what surrounds us: the people, events, nature, technologies, normalities and absurdities of today. The group, which consists of ten regular members from Spain, France, New Zealand, Australia and Germany, was formed in Berlin in 2009 and mainly plays a contemporary repertoire, which is covered by a core ensemble of violin, viola, cello, bass, flute, clarinet, saxophone, harp, piano and percussion.