Homeland, soil, blood, nation: at first cautiously, soon self-confidently, a "we" pulls word after word from the swamp of history a set of ideas long thought to have been overcome.
Who is this "we" that has been invoked a hundred times, this German, this national?
The "we" assimilates texts by Hölderlin, Hegel, Heidegger, Fichte, Kleist and the RAF and, in thinking about identity and homeland, seemingly inevitably circles around the exclusion of the other, the foreign.
Wolken.Heim., commissioned by Theater Bonn in 1988, is a national search for traces and a biting commentary on the resistance of National Socialist thought. An eloquent, unsparing text of oppressive relevance.
Elfriede Jelinek was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004 and is one of the most important voices in German-language theatre.
Director Florian Hein (*1989 in Halle), whose works often operate at the interface between language and music, divides Jelinek's text between four actors and a ten-member chorus.
Photo: (c) Kerstin Schomburg
