Duration: 50'

 

20 TL

 

 

 

Concept/Performance: Anna Mendelssohn | Artistic Collaboration: Yosi Wanunu | Music Composition: Jorge Sánchez-Chiongc | Light Design: Jan Maertens | Technics: Edgar Aichinger | Simultaneous Turkish Translation: Kaya Genç | In co-operation with: Tanzquartier Wien | Supported by: the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna and bm:ukk | With the support of: PACT Zollverein (Essen) | Thanks to: toxic dreams

 

This event is made possible by INTPA - International net for dance and performance Austria of Tanzquartier Wien from funds by BMUKK and BMeiA

 

 

Finding a political monologue:

 

At the outset of this project I had in mind to research myself into the topic of melting ice caps and climate change in order to finally write a performance text for myself. But as my research progressed, I discovered that I was finding a vast amount of monologues on the web, just there and ready for me to use. Interviews, conferences, lectures, and all of these monologues were much better than anything I could ever write, which made sense, because a lot of these people actually had some sort of an understanding of what they were talking about. The only thing I could talk about, I realized, was myself.

 

So I decided to approach this topic in a similar way an essayist in literature would approach a topic. Aldous Huxley says essays are comprised of three poles: the personal and autobiographical, the objective and factual, and the abstract and universal pole. Climate change seemed ideal in embracing all of these poles. I began to collect monologues that seemed interesting to me. My definition of interesting was entirely intuitive and associative, as was my research. I collected hard facts, personal accounts, philosophical excursions, apocalyptic scenarios, instructions, battle cries and many more. The personal texts I then began to write were very much informed by this research. Certain ideas kept coming up, fascinated me and seemed to have analogies with aspects of my own personal life. Time (running out, frozen in ice cores, predicting the future), truth (scientific, subjective, higher), tears (mine, other’s, the planet’s). If my starting point had not been the melting of the ice caps and glaciers but rather a massive oil spill, would my personal texts have taken on an entirely different direction – a more murky, gloomy, sticky one? The way the final texts were chosen and then fell together to form the final monologue was again an intuitive, associative process. It happened very fast and without much thinking. There is a lot missing and more to say. - Anna Mendelssohn

 

 

Anna Mendelssohn studied Acting in the UK at Dartington College of Arts and at Bretton Hall, School of Performing Arts. In 2004 she joined the company “toxic dreams” in Vienna and has since performed in more than 15 of their productions. She has also worked with numerous other directors and choreographers such as David Mayaan for the Wiener Festwochen production The Family Table and with SUPERAMAS in the production Empire (Art & Politics). In her own work she is interested in parallels between private-individual and global-political events and herein especially for the role of language and rhetoric. In 2010 she created the internationally successful solo Cry Me a River, for which she received the Actor’s Prize at the Impulse Festival 2011 as well as the Jury and the Coproduction prize at Arena Festival 2010. In May 2011, in the framework of a co-operation between Wiener Festwochen and Tanzquartier Wien, she premiered her new piece art for a lonely heart. She is currently working on a new production Here and Now, coproduced by Tanzquartier Wien and Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin) that will premiere in 2013.

 

 

This event is made possible by INTPA - International net for dance and performance Austria of Tanzquartier Wien from funds by BMUKK ve BMeiA.