A scenic composition with images, music, language and song, at the center of which is a creator... an artist... a decadent who creates himself as the “sum of all human souls in Zarathustrian freedom”. The inspiration for the artist portrait were modern artists: Edvard Munch, August Strindberg, Richard Dehmel, but above all Stanislaw Przybyszewski, “the brilliant Pole”, as August Strindberg called him. Everyone met in their local bar in Berlin, “Zum Schwarzen Ferkel” - a place for artistic bohemia at the time. The protagonist, symbolically called EGO here, is a sum of decadent traits that can be recognized both in Przybyszewski's biography and in his literary characters. “The Sad Satan,” as Przybyszewski was also called, had an incredibly invigorating and stimulating effect at the time. 

 

Berlin, Paris, Krakow: the cities of his life. Nietzsche, Wagner, Schopenhauer: the names of his prophets. “L'art pour l'art”: his artistic credo. We accompany the protagonist on a “journey of the soul”, a “life mass”, a “funeral mass”, to put it in Przybyszewski’s words. The artist, who is not at home anywhere, is driven by an endless longing for longing. Suffering, love, ecstasy and abyss are his stations. Designing life as a work of art may seem a bit pathetic today... but doesn't “the longing for longing” drive artists today just as much as it did back then?... 

 

Special lighting technology that gradually makes the scenes appear and disappear into the dark creates an atmosphere that can be felt in E. Munch's pictures. A sensual aesthetic inspires the stage design: lights, shapes, colors and specially made costumes play. Stage characters are characterized by breaks, new beginnings and repetitions. Every character and every scene has its musical leitmotifs, supplemented by variations on R. Wagner, R. Strauss, J. Offenbach, P. Lincke and Kraków folk dances. 

 

Link to review ZITTY: https://www.zitty.de/sehnsucht-nach-der-Sehnsucht/

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Direction/dramaturgy: Katarzyna Makowska-Schumacher

Music (composition): Bardo Henning

Choreographic support: Max Makowski

Stage/Props: Andre Putzmann

Costumes: Liuba Miesch

 

Play it:

Ego: Wolfgang Hütter

Alter ego (voice-over): Katarzyna Makowska-Schumacher

Red - Hannah Prasse

Green - Katarzyna Makowska-Schumacher

Yellow  - Kerstin Richter

Artist 1: Josephine Nahrstedt

Artist 2:  Philipp Manuel Bodner

Vocals: Kerstin Richter