Themen-Talk

A conversation with musician and director Reto Bieri and literary scholar Elisabeth Bronfen about the hidden, the uncanny, and the (sonic) spaces in between.

This season, too, selected performances will be accompanied by in-depth conversations with experts and participating artists. This time, the focus is on a motif as old as theater itself: the end. Or more precisely: the play in the face of the end. Endings mark transitions, breaks, and states. They point to transience – and to what remains. Samuel Beckett’s «Endspiel» depicts an end that is not a conclusion, but a state, a lingering, a repetition, a play with no way out. Endings and transitions are also explored in other productions: history continues to have an impact in «WAX TRADERS,» one’s own artistic identity is questioned and reflected upon in «HAS BEEN,» and in «Engel der Vernichtung,» the question arises: is the game over when machines play us? In the staged concert «INSGEHEIM,» perception dissolves, and in «À fleur de peau,» the endgame becomes physical – a state between balance and loss of control. «The end, it is the end, it is coming to an end. It may be coming to an end,» read the opening lines of Beckett’s «Endspiel.»