Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wußten

Hundreds of people pass across a Southern piazza bathed in bright light, and for the writer they become characters in his poetic theatre of the world: this is the idea behind Peter Handke’s wordless play “Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wußten” [The Hour When We Knew Nothing of Each Other]. The spirited Hungarian theatremaker Viktor Bodó exposes this contemplative and simultaneously disinterested fantasy to the acid bath of a chaotic metropolis. The stage is a faceless pedestrian zone between moveable container stalls. A cramped and dirty cafe collects up the same dozen passers-by every morning who become witnesses of a mysterious traffic accident. A video camera team follow an individual home as “investigators” and provide fragments of a story which draws us into its wordless spell without us missing the solving of a case. In this production of the Graz Schauspielhaus with members of his Szputnyik Shipping Company from Budapest Bodó unleashes pure playfulness for a hundred minutes: a brilliantly choreographed multimedia symphony of a city and a happy marriage of Pina Bausch and Jacques Tati.