What moves us

How much time have I got?

Ingeborg Bachmann’s EIN GESCHÄFT MIT TRÄUMEN is still relevant today, seventy years on from the Second World War. Two women, one a director, one a composer, have produced a new adaptation for the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

The Business of Dreaming
An audio drama – live onstage – after Ingeborg Bachmann with music by Alexandra Filonenko
Recordings of the original presentation in 1952 blend with the new music and the physically present performers. What was originally theatre designed for the ears becomes a live, staged audio play.
Concept, Director: Anna von Gehren
With Pia Davila, Daniel Gloger, Silke Lange, Ruth Velten, So-Hee Kim
30. January; 1., 3. February 2020

 

Anna von Gehren has adapted Ingeborg Bachmann’s “Ein Geschäft mit Träumen”, a radio play dealing with dreams and trauma. It points to ways of escaping the daily grind.
 

At the end of the Second World War theatres lay bombed out or boarded up. People huddled over their radios and it was boom time for radio plays. In 1952 Ingeborg Bachmann was a 25-year-old editor working at »Rot-Weiß-Rot«, a radio station in Vienna. She adapted her own short story, “Ein Geschäft mit Träumen”, as a radio play. When I heard it, a light went on in my head. It was like I was sucked into that world.

It was amazing the way the actors talked! Those were the days of the old diction where the voice was considered an aesthetic medium that could be tinkered with in every direction. I take Bachmann’s original as my base point and place it in contrast to new levels of approach – the scenery, the space and Alexandra Filonenko’s music. Bachmann’s narrative has its own musicality anyway. She was a composer of music in her younger years and the language she deploys reflects her affinity to music. Her radio play toys with time. The first scene is set in an office, Laurenz’s workplace. His colleagues are bashing away at a hectic pace at their respective tasks. In the immediate post-war years life in Germany was all about looking forward, not backwards, functioning, focusing only on the job at hand, suppressing the trauma of the war. And that comes over in the language at this point in the play: very quick-fire and concertina-ed.

Laurenz has a problem with this hectic pace. He has his own rhythm. He’s a dreamer, noticing things that other people don’t see. A door opens on a shop; he enters and is confronted with the dreams and traumas of his generation. He’s given the role of a dictator and declares total war. He’s then offered the prospect of escaping the strictures of a system where there’s no room for break-downs. A number of realities are superimposed on each other. Laurenz isn’t clear – and neither are we – about what level we are operating on: dream or everyday drudgery?

For me, the text is totally relevant for our times. The present day, too, is affected by dictators and fascists. We, too, are often hidebound by structures and find ways of escaping them – or try to find ways. So the play becomes a reflection on dream and trauma, on time and reality.

 

Alexandra Filonenko has written the music for the adaptation of Bachmann’s “Ein Geschäft mit Träumen”. Can we expect an ear worm or two?
 

Music has to speak to the audience. My work can’t be decorative or illustrative; I’m always trying to create a self-contained work of art. My goal has to be to create music that fits the language used by Ingeborg Bachmann! Her words are very sensuous, musical, almost physical. They resonate with me in the same way that a film script does. When I read the text, it immediately conjured up images in my mind’s eye and ideas for music started coming.

My aim is to render the physicality of Bachmann’s language with my music, with a vibrant music that we can play live in a chamber format: soprano, baritone, accordion, saxophone, piano, electronics. My music is »synthetic« and follows “mute” precepts where they relate to voice: I don’t distinguish between sung words and spoken words. As soon as someone speaks, their words, their breath and their movements can be transposed into melody. For the play’s protagonists, Laurenz and Anna, I’ve written tunes that become leitmotifs. Yes, they are ear worms! It’s amazing when you can pull that off. The theme tune stays with you after you’ve left the theatre. My music presents Anna as a woman of delicate sensibility, fragile, yet astute, even passionate and assertive. She’s like a tree in the desert. And her lover, Laurenz, too, is tender, over-sensitive and but also strong – and I try to convey that in my music. And that’s the way I see Bachmann: rooted yet solitary – and always desperately thirsty. Fragile, abandoned, a loner.

 

Newsletter

News about the schedule
and the start of advance booking
Personal recommendations
Special offers ...
Stay well informed!

Subscribe to our newsletter

Subscribe to our Newsletter and receive 25% off your next ticket purchase.

* Mandatory field





Newsletter