THEOREM - THE BLUE OF TH E SKY

"The Blue of the Sky was written by Georges Bataille in 1935 and published in 1957. The novel starts in London, crosses Vienna and Paris, catches the first events of the civil war in Barcelona, dreams of Leningrad, thinks of the obscene face of the Russian Revolution and ends up in Frankfort-on-the-Main, the very place where Hitlerian Youth begin its march towards "new times"...
The history and atmospheres evoked in this novel are strangely contemporary, at a time when the newly unified European states remind us of the outbreak of the Second World War. The dominance of economic thought, an extreme right revival in Germany, the National Front in France, the collapse of "real socialism" in Eastern Europe, ethnic war in ex-Yugoslavia, resurgent interest in the Manifesto by Karl Marx as a polemic for new economic globalisation… These movements afford an idea of what a community of different peoples in Europe and the world could be like…In this confusion of realities and feelings, the weak individual has to develop different survival strategies. One of them is hedonism, an erotic projection of oneself through the facile ideology of a youth craving experience, which "death and abomination" will undoubtedly reclaim.
To stage The Blue of the Sky is to show the foolish excess of such impetuous thinking. It means laughing at this distress about death, trying to be scared, TS Eliot calling it "paralysed force" or "gesture without move". Theatre cuts the improper part of the actor face like a butcher’s knife; like Picasso, it sews it up again in a deformed and bloody way. Diverse languages, an extreme tension between beings, sexes, feelings, opinions and behaviours create an atmosphere of cruel comedy, an anguish comparable with the electric discharge preceding a violent tempest. This is not a theatrical adaptation of the novel, but a shortened version of the original text, to which films projections of daily life in London, Paris, Vienna and Leningrad in the 1935s have been added, together with pictures of civil war in Barcelona and documents of Hitlerian Youth.
Ivan Stanev.

Visit Ivan Stanev's website (in German): www.ivan-stanev.de

The Blue of the Sky (Das Blau des Himmels) by Georges Bataille Directed byIvan Stanev (Bulgaria / Germany)
Set design Kerstin Eichner et Ivan Stanev Music Marc Lingk Translation Jadja Wolf Technical Direction and Lighting Jörg Bittner and Stefan Neumann Starring Alexandra Bahr, Josephin Graf, Grischa Kofman, Lazare, Malte Rudhart, Jeanette Spassova, Krylon Superstar, Brigitte Zeh & Gästen. Premiere - November 24, 2000 - Sophiensæle (Berlin, Germany) Co-production Sophiensæle (Berlin, Germany), La Rose des Vents (Villeneuve d'Ascq, France), Senate of Berlin (Germany), THEOREM (association supported by the Culture 2000 programme of the European Union)
"The Blue of the Sky was written by Georges Bataille in 1935 and published in 1957. The novel starts in London, crosses Vienna and Paris, catches the first events of the civil war in Barcelona, dreams of Leningrad, thinks of the obscene face of the Russian Revolution and ends up in Frankfort-on-the-Main, the very place where Hitlerian Youth begin its march towards "new times"... The history and atmospheres evoked in this novel are strangely contemporary, at a time when the newly unified European states remind us of the outbreak of the Second World War. The dominance of economic thought, an extreme right revival in Germany, the National Front in France, the collapse of "real socialism" in Eastern Europe, ethnic war in ex-Yugoslavia, resurgent interest in the Manifesto by Karl Marx as a polemic for new economic globalisation… These movements afford an idea of what a community of different peoples in Europe and the world could be like…In this confusion of realities and feelings, the weak individual has to develop different survival strategies. One of them is hedonism, an erotic projection of oneself through the facile ideology of a youth craving experience, which "death and abomination" will undoubtedly reclaim. To stage The Blue of the Sky is to show the foolish excess of such impetuous thinking. It means laughing at this distress about death, trying to be scared, TS Eliot calling it "paralysed force" or "gesture without move". Theatre cuts the improper part of the actor face like a butcher’s knife; like Picasso, it sews it up again in a deformed and bloody way. Diverse languages, an extreme tension between beings, sexes, feelings, opinions and behaviours create an atmosphere of cruel comedy, an anguish comparable with the electric discharge preceding a violent tempest. This is not a theatrical adaptation of the novel, but a shortened version of the original text, to which films projections of daily life in London, Paris, Vienna and Leningrad in the 1935s have been added, together with pictures of civil war in Barcelona and documents of Hitlerian Youth. Ivan Stanev. Visit Ivan Stanev's website (in German): www.ivan-stanev.de

The Blue of the Sky (Das Blau des Himmels) by Georges Bataille Directed byIvan Stanev (Bulgaria / Germany)

The Blue of the Sky
(Das Blau des Himmels)

by Georges Bataille
Directed byIvan Stanev (Bulgaria / Germany)