Monday 29 September 2014

From Vienna to Bratislava

How wonderful to be fetched at Vienna airport by a driver of the Slovak National Theatre Bratislava. It is 10 years now that I first was brought by car from Vienna to Bratislava, then also being involved in an ETC project: ‚Learning Europe’, created by Armin Petras - it united 12 actors and 6 directors from 5 countries. Three of them – Slovakia, Slovenia and Lithuania - were just about to join the EU. 10 years ago I for the first time recognised that Bratislava was only some 60 km away from Vienna, that the river Danube was the same here and there, and the landscape as well – and I was overwhelmed by this fact. And I cursed those who had constructed the Iron Curtain, and divided the very heart of Old Europe, and had separated people and made them feel more and more foreign to one another. Now, 25 years after the Fall of the Wall and the start of ‚Soft Revolution’ in Slovakia I just felt happy on my way to the rehearsals of LAND DER ERSTEN DINGE / BLUDIČKA / FEN FIRES. And I didn’t at all like the pictures which, too, came into my mind and which tell what actually happens at the Eastern border of Slovakia, in Ukraine.
Although the bathtube on the stage broke during an interview for this blog because too much people hat entered it, and despite some difficulties to completely understand one another in this bilingual production, I still got happier in discovering that our play will work, that with the actors Emilia, Gaby, Dusan and Eric, directed by Brit, we obviously got a dream team to create Ninos play. The first part of rehearsals in Bratislava now is finished. In the end of October we’ll start for another three weeks of rehearsals in Berlin – and then have the first night on November 14th in Berlin, 27th in Bratislava. Keep your fingers crossed!


Christa Müller, Dramaturge at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin