Oliver Zahn
STEINERNE GÄSTE
On stage the artist can be seen with an empty podium. Orphaned plinths like this are the subject of ‘STEINERNE GÄSTE’ which is concerned with the afterlife of toppled statues – after they have fallen, are they genuinely gone? A production that shifts between a sober lecture and bombastic opera music.
tanzhaus nrw
Language: German, a handout is available in English
Oliver Zahn tells of the toppled statues of colonial masters and generals, about Lenin’s head and the eagle at the entrance to Tempelhof airport. They are cut up, buried, dug up again, smelted down, misappropriated as building materials, hidden and, not infrequently, put back up again. What happens to monuments after they have fallen reveals a great deal about the societies that wish to dispose of them – and often produces unintended metaphors that are absurdly comical.
The initial idea for the production came from Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’, whose music is repeatedly heard here. In the opera, the eponymous hero is stalked by the statue of a man that he murdered. Is the ghost real or a manic projection on the part of the perpetrator? In the theatre, stage fog rolls across the empty plinth. Who or what do we believe we can see in these elusive forms? What is clear is that the ghost will not be gone as long as the plinth is standing.
“A ghost train ride through the world of toppled monuments.”
Oliver Kranz, RBB Kultur, 24.2.2022
Credits ›
By and with: Oliver Zahn
Dramaturgy: Felizitas Stilleke
Technical Direction: Dennis Dieter Kopp
Artistic Producer: Martina Neu
Production ›
An Oliver Zahn production in co-production with the HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin. Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
Biographies ›
Dennis Dieter Kopp studied Theatre, Media and Literature at the University of Hildesheim. He worked there as a freelance lighting designer and technician with an additional dramaturgical role on the student festival State of the Art and on numerous theatre productions. Since 2016 he has worked as a touring technician and Technical Director for the independent company HAUPTAKTION (Hannah Saar, Julian Warner, Oliver Zahn et al.), in particular on ‘Situation mit Doppelgänger’. He has taken this role for Thermoboy FK since 2015 for productions including ‘La Casa’ (2014). As a member of and performer with cobragianni.cobra he has been responsible for ‘Let Me Be the Object of Your Desire’ (2012) and ‘EIN BISSCHEN MEHR MUSS MAN SCHON SEHEN oder: Wie ich mich in einen Schmetterling verwandelte’ (2017). His artistic practice is primarily concerned with issues of critical research into masculinity and the search for queer, feminist and intersectional perspectives. Dennis Dieter Kopp currently works as Technical Director for the Brecht Festival.
Felizitas Stilleke is a freelance dramaturg, artist and curator. She works as a festival dramaturg (Berlin Theatertreffen 2018, Impulse Theater Festival 2017 and FAVORITEN 2014 as Co-Director) and directs performance conferences, such as Branchentreff 2019–2021 and B.A.L.L. 2022, as well as working as a production dramaturg in Berlin, North Rhine-Westphalia, Zurich and the Netherlands. She holds a B.A. in German Literature/Narrative Studies from Bochum and an M.A. in Cultural Poetics from the University of Münster. In 2020 she started a series of podcast sessions at Ballhaus Ost entitled ‘The Mother in Me is the Mother in You’, in which she readdressed the discourse around the issue of not/not yet/no longer/perhaps/becoming a mother in conversation with friends. In all her work she is concerned and motivated by the search for radical intersectional/feminist change and the cultivation of collective knowledge.
Oliver Zahn (*1989) is a theatre-maker and performer. His choreographic-discursive performance essays often revolve around the writing of history, the politics of memory, collective remembrance and intangible knowledge. These are always based on extensive research – ethnographic, archive-based and experimenting on his own body. In addition to ‘STEINERNE GÄSTE’, his recent works include ‘LOB DES VERGESSENS, Parts 1+2’, ‘RUINEN’ and ‘BERGENTRÜCKUNG’.