Pfauen
Four people are stranded in an empty room and can no longer escape – except through song. So, they plan their escape, or their stay in the trap, through singing.
From songs and symphonic fragments by Gustav Mahler, Thom Luz and his ensemble create a short world history in sound. The production explores the musical possibilities of an empty hall at the end of time, where four singing, doubting figures are stranded, transforming Mahler's massive orchestral settings into chamber music arrangements for unusual instrumentation. Classical instruments now exist only as distant memories, and the songs are about green forests and fresh breezes that also seem to belong to a world of the past.
Mahler's music is marked by melancholy, overwhelming, and fear of the rapidly changing world between centuries. It speaks of the torn and contradictory nature of life, both then and now, translating it into symphonic and lyrical tales, torn between superhuman jubilation and world-encompassing sadness.
Thus, a space of associations opens up, concerning the life of the Earth and its strange inhabitants, between musical Robinsonades and Beckett-like waiting rooms, where Mahler can be rediscovered just as much as the connection between world-weariness and optimism for change.
Because, just as Mahler's songs and symphonies often deal with the cosmos of decline, despair, decay, and the exhaustion of the world, Luz’s musical theater evenings are never hopeless, but, on the contrary, always full of quiet humor and magically beautiful theater moments.
