, Bruch‘-

VARIETÉ (Die schlimme Botschaft)

With David Attenberger, Sofia Borsani, Challenge Gumbodete, Stanislav Iordanov, Yara Bou Nassar and Melina Pyschny.

The series ,Bruch‘-varieté explores historical cabaret and variety forms as precarious laboratories for individualised and ephemeral modes of rupture, mixing commercial entertainment, aestheticised revolt and esoteric experiment. At Cabaret Voltaire, ,Bruch‘- adapts Carl Einstein’s didactic play Die schlimme Botschaft (1921) as an agitprop revue. The anarchist art theorist’s long forgotten dramatic text, which was banned for ‘blasphemy’ upon publication, retells the passion of Christ by transposing it into present times. Departing from the fiction that Einstein along with comrades premiered the piece in Zurich fifteen years later in order to mobilise fighters for the Spanish Civil War, his meditation on art, politics and religion is staged in the form of performative drafts developed with the ensemble of Theater Neumarkt.

Co-produced by Theater Neumarkt. Thanks to Salome Hohl and Tine Milz. Photography by Philip Frowein.