Tonight: A White Elephant - as part of "Summer at the Castle"

TONIGHT: A WHITE ELEPHANT
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 one of seven artists each 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 "Love Song" - and moves not only his beloved but every reader at the deepest level of feeling. After a park walk exploring Rilke's life and work, the theatre in Wasseralfingen goes a step further: 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 memories of his mother, family dinners and life in the great city of Paris. It was Clara Westhoff who had taken him there, while their daughter Ruth stayed behind in Worpswede. The sensory experience of everyday life and the reflection on our existence are already central to this early work - and they run through the contributions of the visual artists, who extend these thoughts in their own pieces. Even as a child, the protagonist realised: "I have never seen masks before, but I immediately understand that there must be masks."