THE 1ST 40 YEARS I KEPT LOOKING FOR MY GOD

PRODUCTION I IN THE CYCLE

THEATRICAL VOICES IN GERMAN AND AMERICAN LANGUAGE. A WORLD PREMIERE.

PREMIERE: 21.03.2000 20:00

LAST PERFORMANCE: 16.04.2000 20:00

 

Director: Mary Overlie (New York)
Stage/Installation: Berverly Piersol (Wien/USA)
Music: Marcelo Gama (BR)
Dramaturgie: Eva Wallensteiner (A)
Mise-en-scène: Corinna Sommerhäuser (D)
Ensemble: Walter Lauterer (A)
Mask: Maria Pointner (A)
Press and Publicationwork: Anzelini’s Büro, Monika Anzelini (A)
Artistic Collaboration: Eva Brenner (Wien/USA)
Performing artists: Marcelo Gama (BR), Beate Göbel (D), Clemens Matzka (A), Maren Rahmann (D)

The Text
A significant aspect of the texts - as well as the mise-en-sène - is the question of the "male" gaze towards the "wounded" woman, signified by the lens of the camera. In the texts, a man has made multiple photographs of his wounded and vulnerable young wife with secret camera - her nose appears bandaged and her entire face is "disfigured" as a result of a skiing accident - instead of "holding her hand and comforting" her" (Marlene Streeruwitz). This archaic situation of the male-female relationship is starting point for Streeruwitz' texts, asking the fundamental question of "who looks at whom and why from what point-of-view? And what is happening to the one "looked-at"?

Parallel to the questioning of the "male gaze" onto the "wounded woman", the author topicalizes the frail relationship between love, aging and death which she finds prefigured in catholicism - in counterpoint to the real experience of love of women today. The reflection of maternal and foreign language(s) forms a meta-text of the piece - the text is written in both German and American English - whereby the foreign language incrimentally increases over the original German. The "intimacy" of the maternal language hampers a free-flowing expression of feeelings such as fear, shame, or humiliation.

Therefore the English-spoken parts take increasingly over from the German parts, in step with a growing self-consciousness of the woman who is described in the text as standing in front of a mirror, looking at herself and contemplating both her new, incipient love-affair with a man at about age 40, as well as flashing back to her first love-affair with her husband at about age 20. That is, the more the woman finds back to a genuine expression of "intimacy" with herself, the more she feels compelled to think/speak in the foreign language.

"The first 40 years I kept looking for my god.
I did not find him.
He was behind the camera.
Actually it was a skiing accident. But when I saw the pictures.
Could you take such pictures of anyone you said you loved.
I started real early. I thought this is the way to do it.
You find your God. And then you follow him.
Just like that. You know."

Marlene Streeruwitz