Die Frau vom Meer

For the first time we play on the lake in Raffelbergpark and approach the strange element of water. The playing surface: a house on the water. Nature and art merge during the White Nights. The audience, equipped with headphones, observes the scenery from the safe shore; Ibsen's people, on the other hand, move on shaky terrain, the sea possessing a mysterious attraction.

As so often in Ibsen's plays, the characters revolve around themselves, searching for their own nature, their own destiny - for safety or freedom. After the death of his first wife, Dr. Wangel marries Ellida, the daughter of a lighthouse keeper. She longs for the sea again and for that sailor she met ten years ago. "The horror lies much deeper, Wangel! The horrible thing, that's the undertow."

Donna Haraway, historian of science and feminist icon whose texts, among other authors, expand on Ibsen's play, conceives of a comprehensively unified nature in which plants, animals, and humans merge; inorganic nature is also included. She outlines a politics of equal rights for all parts of the whole that visionarily overcomes the separation between humans and animals and conceives of unversal nature as a radical overcoming of the Anthropocene. 

Bolette: I don't think we live much differently than the goldfish there in the pond. The fjord is so close, and in it the great wild shoals of fish swim in and out again. But the poor tame house fish don't know anything about that.

Gefördert im Rahmen von NEUE WEGE durch das Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes NRW in Zusammenarbeit mit dem NRW KULTURsekretariat.