Heute: ein weißer Elefant - Premiere | as part of "Sommer im Schloss"

HEUTE: EIN WEIßER ELEFANT
an evening by, with and about Rainer Maria Rilke, Clara Westhoff, Ruth Rilke and a biographer

WITH: Arwid Klaws, Valeria Prautsch and Hugo Ziegler
MUSIC: Bolz & Knecht
ADAPTATION AND DIRECTION: Tina Brüggemann
COSTUMES: Birgit Barth
DRAMATURGY: Ella Elia Anschein and Tonio Kleinknecht
ARTWORKS: each of seven artists presents their own work in response to the piece

"How shall I hold my soul so that it does not touch yours?" asks Rainer Maria Rilke in his poem "Liebes-Lied", reaching not only his beloved but all his readers at the deepest level of feeling. After a park walk exploring Rilke's life and work, the theatre in Wasseralfingen goes further still - alongside selected poems, letters and stories, it brings parts of his novel "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" to the stage. Malte, Rainer's alter ego, discovers masks in a hidden wardrobe, recounts experiences with his mother, family dinners and life in the big city of Paris. It was Clara Westhoff who brought him there, while their daughter Ruth stayed behind in Worpswede. The sensory perception of everyday life and the reflection on our existence are already central to this early work - and they run through the visual artists' responses to it as well. As a child, the protagonist already sensed: "I have never seen masks before, but I immediately understand that masks must exist."