Performing Arts Season in November: Theatre Creations by Thorsten Lensing and Philippe Quesne
In November, Berliner Festspiele‘s Performing Arts Season will present two theatre productions from Berlin and Paris by Thorsten Lensing and Philippe Quesne, celebrated by audiences and critics alike.
“Verrückt nach Trost“, Thorsten Lensing’s most recent production, saw its world premiere at Salzburger Festspiele and has been previously presented at Berlin’s Sophiensӕle in 2022. Now the show returns to Berlin, this time to Haus der Berliner Festspiele, from 13 to 16 November. With a cast of outstanding performers – onstage: Sebastian Blomberg, André Jung, Ursina Lardi and Devid Striesow – in his first self-written play, Thorsten Lensing tells the life-story of siblings Charlotte and Felix who are grieving for their late parents.
With his most recent theatre creation “The Garden of Delights”, premiered at the 2023 Festival d’Avignon, Philippe Quesne and his company Vivarium Studio celebrate their 20th anniversary. Inspired by the eponymous triptych by Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch and performed by a brilliant international ensemble, the large-scale, retro-futurist epic gives us an inkling of the future of a world somewhere between medieval fauna, eco-science fiction and modern Western. This show was co-produced by Berliner Festspiele and will be presented on the Main Stage of Haus der Berliner Festspiele on 26 and 27 November.
Theatre
“Verrückt nach Trost”
Written & directed by Thorsten Lensing
Wednesday, 13 to Saturday, 16 November 2024, 19:00
Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Main Stage
Duration: 3 h 30 min, one interval
In German
On 14.11. with English surtitles
On 16.11. with an audio description in German
In “Verrückt nach Trost”, the audience accompanies siblings Charlotte and Felix through equally surreal, moving and hilarious episodes from childhood to old age. Thorsten Lensing has written his first theatre play for an excellent cast of long-standing artistic companions: Sebastian Blomberg, André Jung, Ursina Lardi and Devid Striesow.
In the first part of the show, the children’s exuberant imagination lets their grief for their parents fade into the background for a moment, while the second part focusses on adult life and the siblings go their separate ways.
The audience accompanies the characters over a period of several decades and in the end, they share some of their memories. What is at stake is nothing less than life in the face of death, the fear of not having found one’s own way and the great longing for the feeling of being truly alive.
The Berlin-based director Thorsten Lensing is renowned throughout Europe. He has been staging independent theatre productions since the mid-1990s, mostly in co-production with theatres and festivals including Sophiensæle in Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt, Theater im Pumpenhaus in Münster, Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Schauspielhaus Zürich and deSingel in Antwerp. He always works with a fixed group of freelance actors. After stage-adaptations of Fyodor M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov” and David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” (invited to the 2019 Theatertreffen of Berliner Festspiele), “Verrückt nach Trost” is Thorsten Lensing’s first self-written piece for the theatre. The presentation of this work on four nights at Haus der Berliner Festspiele launches a long-term co-operation project between Thorsten Lensing and Berliner Festspiele.
World premiere: 6 August 2022, Salzburger Festspiele
A co-production of Salzburger Festspiele and Thorsten Lensing with Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Sophiensæle Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Theater Chur, asphalt Festival Düsseldorf, Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt/Main.
Funded by Haupstadtkulturfonds Berlin and the City of Münster.
Theatre
“The Garden of Delights”
Philippe Quesne / Vivarium Studio
Tuesday, 26 & Wednesday, 27 November 2024, 19:30
Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Main Stage
Duration: 1 h 45 min, no interval
In French with German and English surtitles
In an austere landscape, a droll group of travellers discovers “The Garden of Delights (Le jardin des délices)” by French director and set designer Philippe Quesne and his Vivarium Studio, inspired by the eponymous triptych by Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch. In an inhospitable, stony environment, a group of eight travellers step out of a bus and immediately begin to explore and shape their surroundings, and find that a cracking dinosaur egg plays an important part.
As often in Philippe Quesne’s work, the characters form an enforced community of individualists who begin to work on a not quite clearly defined project in a kind of test arrangement. They draw on the treasure trove of memories from centuries of European high and popular culture: William Shakespeare, Georges Perec, Henry Purcell and Roy Orbison are recited and performed, scientific discourses unfold and a kind of talent show takes place – and in the end, all eight protagonists, brilliantly embodied by Philippe Quesne’s artistic companions, seem to have landed in Hieronymus Bosch’s painting itself.
Until the group continues its journey after around 100 minutes, they remember fragments of previous culture, advance toward the core of human self-understanding and imagine the utopia of a different life in uncertain times.
Director, scenographer and dramatist Philippe Quesne is among the most internationally renowned French theatre makers. He studied visual art, visual design and scenography in Paris. Initially working as a set designer at various theatres and opera houses, he initiated numerous projects and spaces for performances, concerts and exhibitions. Philippe Quesne founded Vivarium Studio as an independent group of actors, artists, dancers and musicians in 2003. With them, the author and director developed pieces where the set enclosed the performers like a closed ecosystem. Over the years, the group has created a repertoire of productions presented around the world. After a period as artistic director of the Théâtre Amandiers-Nanterre (2014 to 2020), Quesne reactivated his independent company Vivarium Studio in early 2021. Their most recent production, “The Garden of Delights”, continues the company’s exploration of our transformative modern world and the position which humans as well as animate and inanimate nature hold within it.
World premiere: 6 July 2023, Festival d’Avignon
A production of Vivarium Studio and Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne in co-production with Festival d’Avignon, Ruhrtriennale, Athens Epidaurus Festival, Tangente St. Pölten –Festival für Gegenwartskultur, Berliner Festspiele, Théâtre du Nord – Centre Dramatique National Lille / Tourcoing Hauts-de-France, Maison de la Culture d’Amiens – Pôle européen de création et de production, Les deux scenes – Scène nationale de Besançon, Centro Dramático Nacional, MC93, Maison de la culture de Seine-Saint-Denis Bobigny, Le Maillon – Théâtre de Strasbourg – Scène européenne, Kampnagel, Festival NEXT, Scène nationale Carré-Colonnes Bordeaux-Métropole, National Theater and Concert Hall Taipei.
The Performing Arts Season’s completeprogramme has been published on Berliner Festspiele’s website. Tickets can be purchased online on berlinerfestspiele.de and at the box office at Gropius Bau.
Audio description “Verrückt nach Trost”:
The performance of “Verrückt nach Trost” on Saturday, 16 November at 19:00 at Haus der Berliner Festspiele will feature an audio description in German. From 17:30, there will be a touch tour, from 18:30 there will be pre-boarding and the introduction in the auditorium.
An audio-descriptive introduction (MP3-download) will also be available on Berliner Festspiele’s website from 13 November.
Further information in the Media Library of Berliner Festspiele:
DanKolber’s essay “Keine geschlossene Welt“ on the rehearsal and creation process of “Verrückt nach Trost“.
Press accreditation Performing Arts Season:
We will be happy to receive your accreditation requests for the performances in November and December at pas.akkreditierung@berlinerfestspiele.de.
Press photos are available for download in the Press Area of Berliner Festspiele’s website.