EROS (encore)
With Joscha Baltha, Fatima Dramé, Stanislav Iordanov, Mateusz Piekarski, Ruby Ann Rawson, Mervan Malwin Ürkmez. Contributions by Kolja Gollub, RENDL.
Our story goes like this: As the union of capital and nationalism has turned Europe into a slaughterhouse, a group of young revolutionaries seeks shelter on the island of Maratonga, also known as the Island of Love. Among them are Alma, her best friend and ex-lover Camillo and her new partner Heinz. In spite of their professed ideals, the heteropatriarchal and possessive ways of togetherness they hoped to have left behind in their native province of Bavaria quickly resurface in their new surroundings, and things are bound to get heated…
EROS (encore) reworks Erich Mühsam’s Die Freivermählten (1909/1914), which the author prefaced as a ‘polemical propaganda’ play. Yet, his constellation of libidinal economies and relationship models does not reveal a straightforward revolutionary agenda of radical love. On the contrary, its dramaturgy unfolds a rather unsettling variety of irreconcilable affective modes and amorous gestures triggered by the ever confusing arrows of bittersweet eros. At Tanzcafé Maratonga, the previously unstaged play is translated into a site-specific varieté show and speculative anamnesis of our romantic unconscious – a ‘how (not) to’ for the polycurious.
In addition to the performance, an unabridged reading of Die Freivermählten was staged at nsdoku in the framework of the exhibition TO BE SEEN. queer lives 1900–1950.
Supported by the Department of Art and Culture of the City of Munich, Richard Stury Stiftung, nsdoku, Münchner Kammerspiele. Thanks to Juliane Bischoff, Carina Güttler and Konrad Wehrmeister. Photography by Constanza Meléndez.