Download "Maramba" -‐ A theatre project from the stories of

"Maramba" -­‐ A theatre project from the stories of Paula Köhlmeier, produced by Cornelia Rainer in the Altes Hallenbad in Feldkirch Translation Jordan Grantham The director of "Maramba by Paula Köhlmeier: a talent for happiness?" has transposed the author’s forty-­‐seven prose plays into the stage world through the means of the theatre, has transformed them into fascinating, multi-­‐layered, speedy, polyphonic languages, and has staged all of this wordy universe in alternately breathless, yet silent, reflexive mono-­‐dialogues. Just as her own affirmation, the spoken sentences of the poetic and simultaneously magical spoken images are once again typed into a travel typewriter, as if the actors who were dramatically active in playing numerous characters wanted to condense the varied themes of the play and, like epigrams, tack them to a wall, so that they can be taken away again when needed. This multi-­‐perspective stage performance is projected parallel onto screens that are positioned at the edges of the theatre space between the stalls, but the narrative is not identical. On the edge of the seat one sits and watches through many perspectives at the diverse event, which is about the literary-­‐fictive as well as life-­‐
related epicentre of Hohenems and other places which played a role in Paula's life, such as Vorarlberg, Vienna, LA and Mexico, where she lived for a while. Because I wanted something to happen In addition to the film projections, which are similar to the actual real stage performances, there is the jazzy cool cosmos from Charlie Bird Parker and John Coltrane, both legendary American jazz greats. Another theatrical and stylistic device, which is used against all current comme il faut regulations, is smoking. All the characters puff away on one Smart Export after another in the play, as if they wanted to inhale the world and life twice and many more times. All you can smoke. At the beginning of the 1960s, Smart Export was the second-­‐most popular cigarette brand. In 1968, it took first place from Austria 3 and was then overtaken by Hobby. All these glimmering stems were only lit by convinced smokers. The white and golden strokes on the black packet, the globe and the "semper et ubique -­‐ always and everywhere" make the stage happenings in a global theatre smoky. The literary complex world of Paula Köhlmeier brings together two lovers on a bench, kissing like "Lovers on a Park Bench" by Samuel Johnson, in the opera "Einstein on the Beach" by Phil Glass, premiered on 10th Feb 2003 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In the theatre, however, the two kissing people remain unknown strangers who, though they are fiercely covetous, "like to eat," but have no talent for love. These text passages are like echoing postscripts from life "How do you know that?" -­‐ She knows "from movies". And whether there was a hiker in "Waiting for Godot" or not, and what Godot actually was. "This is the truth." Samuel Beckett's play was premiered in 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris. Lucky falls silent and Pozzo goes blind at the end. How much do you love me? Count the number of stars, measure the waters of the oceans with a teaspoon. Number of grains of sand on the sea shore. Impossible, you say ... (Samuel Johnson in "Einstein on the Beach") They like films, especially the old black-­‐and-­‐white films, the classic are the best because they are almost always tragic. And "when I see such a movie, I cry over the film, and have no time left to cry about my life," said Helga and Laura and Sophie. They get to know each other in a record store, as in one of the Paula Köhlmeier stories, in which both love music. They talk about Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. Both buy the same album. A coincidence from which a conversation develops But it is no coincidence, for they love each other. And love is so intense that he is almost burnt by her fire. In the course of a histrionically excellent performance from all five actors and actresses on stage -­‐ Sophie Aujesky, Laura Mitzkus, Helga Pedross, Andreas Schwankl, and Rouven Magnus Stöhr -­‐ sentences are fragmented into a mirrored story or escalate to the almost surreal. The views of the theatre-­‐goers wander with the questions raised by the play about happiness and marriage. "Are you happy?" Helga: "We are happy. My husband says, "We are happy, and I rely on happiness." I'm glad he cares about it. I have few wishes. " What sort of story shall we hear? A central theme of the stories, which deal with desire, desire and longing, pain and injuries, is happiness. The search for happiness. If only one could only define it. It is a truth with gaps. Looking into a mirror, the body-­‐sized ones should be forbidden anyway, because it is about unconditional love and at the same time about the fear of being alone. For the acting women like the men. "It is too cold for me here," as with Peter Bichsel. "Is there a sea in Mexico?" On either side there is one. But in the play there are one-­‐sided gender-­‐assignable occurrences. Whenever one "lights the cigarette with his wife and finishes smoking with his beloved". Andreas: "The woman and the man were very close to each other at heart. But the circumstances did not make them a couple” Sophie: "She said the wrong words, Andreas: and he was afraid to take a step." The characters long for golden hands, for the golden ball. As in the fairy tale of the Frog Prince. Here, the princess hurls the disgusting frog to the wall, and is not punished for it, but still receives a prince and the golden ball. But in "Maramba: a talent for happiness" the characters in their constellations ultimately give no one their heart. And they lose sight. On a theatrical level it is about the both-­‐this-­‐and-­‐that, the attracting and pushing away, as Helga says: I do not need a man who cares about me. Andreas: Why? Helga: No man who just spoon feeds me, so I just have to swallow it. In these various, repetitious positions, the play is dramatic, sharp-­‐edged and scrambled, when the text and the acting rhetorically oscillate between complaint and accusation. Here the dialogical structure breaks down and the monologised passages "We have made an effort to be happy" are also a rebellion against the realms of the habitual and the everyday. "Maramba," says the play, "... means everything and nothing. It is a word that does not exist, and which can therefore grow into a whole city. A city with many lights, cool air and a language of its own." Music on the water and Henri Matisse's "Jazz" The stories of the Paula Köhlmeier will be alive this evening, roaring like the sea between Acapulco and Salina Cruz by the Pacific Ocean and Cancun and the Isla Mujeres on the Yucatán Peninsula. And hissing between the world's oceans like the volcanic, smoking mountain Popocatépetl, also called El Popo or Don Goyo. With Paula's narratives, we, the audience, become aware of the fact that with each story, our vision in the Theater des Alten Hallenbads is less blurred, as Brigitte Walk has repeated for several years here and elsewhere, and that we are witnesses to, I must say at this point, the genius and significant staging of Cornelia Rainer. Here, theatre is the theatre's essence. Archaic as with the Greeks and absolutely modern in a timeless, here fits the word, Ductus: "We describe people. In order to know who we are," Cornelia tells us about Paula Köhlmeier, "that happiness can not be commanded" and that love is a child of freedom, one would like to add. And Paula, with her stories as they were translated into theatre on the stage of the Altes Hallenbad in Feldkirch, knew the difference when it comes to unconditional love. Sophie: An adult does not love unconditionally. Laura: How come? Helga: They just love. Now and in the future. The words of the play spread at the end over Hohenems. In the video, R says: We bury the shoes laces in the ground. So no one steals them. Even if the heart is actually as thin as a sheet of paper. "I'm too young to feel so old" Sings Rouven at the end. And Andreas says, "Vienna is too big to meet by chance." To which Helga says: "At my home in Vorarlberg, I meet people by chance every day. I even meet those people every day that I do not want to see. And it is no coincidence. They are here, and I am here too." The characters of the play are like El Popo or Don Goyo, like volcanoes or cigarettes burning at both ends. On the "picture" frame of this evening are participants: Stefan Olivier, Camera; Tong Zhang/ Andreas Rambach/ Wolfram Reiter, Sound; Sarah Mistura/ Kathi Koutnik Tobias Meier, Editing; Kirstin Tödtling, Video trailer; Wolfgang Streiter/ Florian Herschel, Technology; Suzie Lebrun, Assistant to the director; Ayman Jondi, Make-­‐up; Roland Adlassnigg, Props; Nicole Wehinger/ Brigitte Walk, Production management. Right at the end, Helga says, "Everything starts," the same as the title of a story by Paula. And in the end one is happy with a tear of joy that Paula Köhlmeier has given us such beautiful stories. And in the end you do not want to get up and leave, because this piece of theatre brings so many facets into the world in a very unique style of language, which gets under the skin. Just as one adds a star to the stars in the night sky. "Maramba. Let's call our relationship: Maramba." I would have said. For Paula Köhlmeier, writing was a form of living, just as being on the go is a way of living. Cornelia Rainer and the acting ensemble have given life to the cosmos of Paula Köhlmeier. Breathless. Sometimes with the scent of mango trees.