Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung

Faith, Hope and Charity : A Little Dance of Death in Five Acts

This is a story of Elisabeth, a young woman with serious financial problems. She tries to overcome these by attempting to sell her future corpse already while still living. She finds out fast that this is not allowed, but the a worker at the anatomical institute feels sorry for her and lends her the money anyway. Turns out that Elisabeth already got the necessary amount of money from somebody else and she is therefore sentenced as a scam artist. She swears that she intended to return the borrowed money to all parties as soon as possible and meant to scam nobody, but people don't really believe her. Her epic-love relationship with ambitious young police officer comes to an abrupt end when he finds out about her mischievousness. Devastated and at loss of solutions, the penniless Elisabeth chooses to commit suicide to escape the situation.
 

Original time frame of this play by Ödön von Horváth is the 1930's, a time when poverty, abuse of the social power, economical crisis and corruption were part of everyday life. Director Dalit Bloch sees throughout parallels to present time and wants to encourage the spectator's recognition of this, therefore the place and time of adaptation is abstract. The dialog of the play remains in it's old form in the hope that by choosing this approach, it is possible to dissolve the distance the audience might feel. Modern set design together with old-fashioned speech builds a bridge from the old days to present day.

 

Freies Theater Therwil

Direction: Dalit Bloch

Set design: Dalit Bloch (concept), Andres Jost
Lighting design: Minna Heikkilä
Costume design: Kurt Walter

Assistant: Nathalie Grignaschi

text adaptation: Ueli Blum

Graphic design: Diana Schroth

Performers: Diana Schroth, Gabriele Bianco, Markus Spillmann, Peter Brêchet, Michael Enzler, Bri Jost, Werner Kirchhofer, Norina Molina, Claudia Reinhardt, Gordana Schwizer, Nathalie Grignaschi

Premiere: April 12th, 2013, Mehrzweckhalle, Therwil, Switzerland

Skiing

I think I learned to ski when I was approximately three years old. Growing up in Southern Finland, it meant mostly cross-country. No hills to speak of there. Nonetheless, I used to love that too. Quite often I would take of with some hot chocolate and sandwiches in my backpack and make a little solo tours on the frozen lake to the nearby islands.

On one of the early winters

In the mid-nineties I spent some time in Grenoble, France, as an exchange student. Up until then I hadn't really thought much of alpine skiing, since I never had the finances to go find some decent slopes in Lapland. Suddenly the slopes sort of came to me, so I figured it would be a great sin not to use the opportunity that was presented to me. So off and down the slopes I went. And absolutely fell in love with that. Easy curves and smooth ride, wow....

After that I did some downhill skiing also in Finland, but not very often. Now I've been based in Basel, Switzerland for past six winters. You would think that she's surely going for it again since the mountains are right there. Yeah, right. Somehow for past winters I never made it to the slopes. Wanted to, but never got there. Somehow the winters just flew by and there didn't seem to be time for snow-sports. Show-sports being more time consuming =). And my excuse could also be that there is no mountains in Basel region, it's so-called flatlands of Switzerland.

This winter I was determined to set it right and drag my butt to a ski resort. Yesss, I made it. And wanna do it again. It was so much fun again. Took some time to get my bearings on the new (to me) carvers and all, but at least it didn't fall flat on my face. 

Upright, yesss!

I went with couple of my friends to Feldberg at Black Mountains, Schwarzwald, Germany. A nice and mellow day. Foggy, of course, so not much scenery to boast about. But I was totally prepared for this, since the mountains generally don't wanna show themselves to me. I'm starting to think that they are just an urban legend, -just like the giant crocodiles in the sewers of New York.

I don't really know why it is like that, but generally, when ever I'm heading for the higher ground, there is loads of fog or low-hanging clouds. So no chance to see any kind of mountain formations. Like this time also, as you can see:

The Alps on the background, yes?

However, skiing is much fun, even if there is no postcard-pretty "Alpenblick" on the background. And I have really set my goals to reaching the snow more times this season.

And I'm also dying to invest in new gear, but I try to hold my horses until the end of the season and get it cheaper. Difficult, difficult...

2012 in pictures / part 4

Here comes the last part of photo stream of 2012.

Approaching Dover, UK.

giant corpse flower @ Botanical Garden, Basel

Late autumn catch in Schwarzwald.

Dead Elvis and his one man band @ Agora Bar.

Efficiency on tour

I was working for the Steps 2012 festival at Theater Roxy in Birsfelden when Introdans company from Netherlands arrived. Company had for this particular show twentysomething young dancers from all around the world. All in all they have currently four fullsized ensembles on tour.

These people really have figured the touring out in a cool way. Their tech crew shows up with a humonguous truck which has "Introdans" written on the sides with two meter high block letters. No mistaking there... They pour out of the truck pretty much everything they need including most of the light fixtures and request mainly only electricity (and enough of it). One of the first items to arrive to the new venue is portable kitchen with everything necessary attached; microwave, espresso machine, fridge with cold beer in it etc.

Movable kitchen unit with all the necessities

I was fascinated about the level of efficiency that these people showed. Everything is organized and smooth and they really know what they are doing. They also seem to have realized that if you really wanna have something in certain way, then it's easier to bring it with you. Saves whole lotta time in the end, which I also figured out very fast when touring with an university production last year.

Such a pleasure to work with this kind of people. And it was also cool to observe how they handle things. For example, they drag the ballet bars around the world with them to be used during the warming up of the dancers (photo below). During the get-in these bars serve as aids for the focusing the sidelights =)

Ballet bar travelling the world

I heard that this group was heading next to Indonesia. Maybe they'll ship the container with lights, set and kitchen over? There it might really prove to be a good idea to bring our own stuff, since one never knows the circumstances so precisely =)

Night skies

I was bicycling home last night, pretty deep in thought. Then I suddenly saw these bright lights on the western sky. Whooa! What's that? I dont think that I've ever seen anything quite so bright before.

The conjunction of Venus and Jupiter on 16/6/12 at 20.45

As it turns out, this mid-March is brilliant time of the year to go and crane your neck upwards. For four hours after the sunset one can see the conjunction on Venus and Jupiter above the west horizon. Go check it out, it's pretty awesome. I first thought it must be one of those cranes from one of the constructions sites nearby. But no no, the lights are just sitting there, with no strings attached =) Also other planets are quite visible at the moment.

Easyjet to London, right on schedule at 20:58 =)

BTW. I found this cool site on the web for finding out what actually is up there: It's called Astroviewer and you can set up your location and time to find out the names of constellations, stars, planets and other stuff.
 

Looking south 21.15: bright Sirius and hunting Orion

After the Winter

These sunny days inspire me to do some photography.

'No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.' -Robert Adams 

(Thanks to Hanna for this proverb, I'm totally shamelessly snatching it...=)

Our naked chimneys

Wines are waiting

The Contrast:

My Azalea is anything but dead, but it's blooming itself to grave, I'm afraid.

Rio, the Cat

Real cat's days on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Me and My Business

Graceful

Posing

Enjoying The Sun

"What are you minions staring at?"

The Moon

Last night.

Aoxotoxoa @ Far-Out

We have to move out. Big bummer. In few months. Major bummer.

But, before that: PARTY!
- And party we did, last weekend. Grateful Dead - cover-band "Aoxotoxoa" from Luzern was playing a concert in our basement bar "Far-Out". Far out.

Here's some atmosphere from that nice evening.

Happy Pluto-slippers waiting for the first guests. Note also Spidey.

Ducks supervising the sound quality.

Sound check =)