Lighting design for a theatre piece by andcompany&Co.
„…back in U.S., back in the U.S., back in the U.S.S.R…” The Beatles once sang and so are the temponauts from andcompany&Co. moving on Lenin’s track: One step ahead, two steps back into a future that has passed. The “clinch of revolution and counterrevolution” (Heiner Müller) becomes a dearly hug of two superheroes: Lenin & Lennon. The fairy tale of the frozen revolution (Lenin’s hundred year long sleep) is taking place on the other side of the looking glass, during the second half of the century, when in the West the cult of personality turned into pop-culture. The mausoleum is haunted, ghosts which never were are continually hunting each other: MAUSOLEUM BUFFO is about the politics of mourning and about the cult of the dead which began with Lenin’s burial and didn’t end with Stalin’s. MAUSOLEUM BUFFO is a spinning brass band, the song of the never arriving Red Army, an endless round dance of dead revolutionaries. MAUSOLEUM BUFFO pleads guilty for the cold war, the victory of the west and the downfall of America. MAUSOLEUM BUFFO points at the tragedy of the revolution and the buffo of its failure: Will “snow white Lenin” wake up one day and leave his crystal coffin or the strawberry fields forever? The example of Lennon shows that the 20th century is a history of betrayal of a hope, which since October 1917 was directed towards an end of a global state of war. Only in retrospect on the fatal mistakes of history another, possible history can flash up: Imagine… (andcompany&Co)
Premiered at Hebbel am Ufer HAU2, Berlin 6.1.2009
Feat. Alexander Karschnia, Vettka Kirillova, Thomas Myrmel, Nicola Nord, Sascha Sulimma&Co. Stage and Masks: Hila flashkes&Co. Stage and Masks Realisation: Henri Unsenos&Co. Lighting design: Gregor Knüppel&Co. Probs: Christine Bentele&Co. Technicial director: Marc Zeuske. Production management: Anne Schulz. Production Assistant: Anne Pöhlmann.
Photos Gregor Knüppel
