JUBILEE

Year & Context

1997

10 Years of Theater der Klänge

About the Production

When a theatre turns ten, it celebrates. But how? The answer depends entirely on where you come from — on continent and climate, on Epictetus or Epicurus.

Theater der Klänge turned ten in 1997. A gala was an option. A retrospective. Speeches. Instead, we asked: what does celebration actually mean? And we put the question on stage.

The result was “JUBILEE” — a music, dance and theatre piece that makes celebration itself its subject and its material. The concept followed a deceptively simple idea: ten ways to give a speech at a party; ten ways to dance at a celebration; ten ways to eat festively, to march in procession, to sing ceremonial songs, to perform rituals, to receive honours, to exchange gifts. Ten times ten — one hundred scenes, each compressed to one minute, each stripped to its essence. One hundred minutes of theatre.

The ensemble was international in the fullest sense: performers from Germany, Greece, Great Britain, Israel, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Sweden and Spain brought ten different national and cultural experiences into a shared improvisational process. The scenic material was developed in collective authorship. The music was composed by Thomas Neuhaus — framing, commenting, driving the hundred miniatures forward.

Performances took place at the Pantheon in Düsseldorf-Gerresheim — a listed nineteenth-century ballroom. A venue that celebrates merely by existing. The production was subsequently invited to Paris: the Centre Georges Pompidou, made possible by the Goethe-Institut Munich.

Funded by the City of Düsseldorf (venue & production costs) · State of North Rhine-Westphalia / Ministry for Urban Development, Culture and Sport (ensemble grant) · Stiftung Kunst und Kultur NRW (project grant) · Stiftung van Meeteren · Henkel AG · Goethe-Institut Munich