Premiere: Neue Heimat

What does homeland mean to you?

childhood...


or war?


sitting in the sun....


or shopping at the mall?


folk dancing....


or the earth itself?


what you put on your body...


or something on the inside?


In the process of developing this piece, we went out into the streets and shops and train stations of Kassel and interviewed over 100 people to ask them this very question. Then we went into the studio and answered it ourselves. Our process has a lot to do with asking questions. Not that Johannes or any of us is looking for a single answer. It is the questions themselves, as Rilke so famously wrote....

Am I proud of my homeland?
Do the actions of my home country's government reflect me personally as a citizen?
Does the caged animal feel the cage is its home?
Is Germany my new homeland?
Is homeland something inside me or outside me?

We come from Germany, Italy, Turkey, Costa Rica, Taiwan, Sweeden, Greece, America, Columbia, Georgia, Peru, Khazakstan. But here we all are, in Germany. The piece we premiered on Thursday night is a very personal piece, filled with individual characters and voices. Everyone speaks - and everyone sings. We play music - a guitar, a harmonica, tinkling bells- and yes, we do a folk dance in those German drindel outfits.

Before every premiere there is this feeling of not knowing what a piece is anymore. This used to worry me. But now I realize how necessary that is. To let go of what we have made, so that we can give it away. If I hold on too tightly, and try to make you see or feel something, how will you have your own experience? Over months, we accumulate all of this material in the studio. We work in a very isolated room, with a small group of people. We make something that means a lot to all of us. But when they open the curtain, it's not just ours anymore. It's yours too.