STILL LIFE

STILL LIFE
A CHORUS FOR ANIMALS, PEOPLE, AND ALL OTHER LIVES

Whose life counts as life? Whose life is still a life? Democratic societies are based on the exclusion, digital control and exploitation of existences considered superfluous. Every day we are witness of the brutal denial of the status of living entities to successive groups of beings. STILL LIFE is a choral manifesto of re-invented society, a call for a radical new world of relations. The chorus creates a border-crossing song to expose the invisible mechanisms of violence, exclusion and annihilation of life, turning “never again” into “Auschwitz kein Ende”. The chorus operates with techniques of exaggeration, alienation of language, it exists between lip-sync, language, music and silence. Clashing narrations it creates a digital, post-language song as a monstrous answer to our reality. In the end eight actors, embodying a multiplied Dionysus, god of ecstasy and indestructible life invite you to a vision of a chorus of all living beings: humans and non-humans, living and dead, voices of people murdered in Auschwitz, rhythms of Namibian tribes, animals and all others. The starting point and metaphor for the performance is the magnificent panorama from the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, the wall of biodiversity. Life and non-life in the same time. 

“Theater is a place of hope” excerpt of the interview with Arno Widmann, Marta Górnicka, Maxim Gorki Theater

The main picture of the production shows the wall of biodiversity from the Berlin Museum of Natural History. A magnificent panorama. The biggest still life in the world. You stand in front of it and know, all these creatures belong together. But then you realise. It doesn’t just show life. It also shows death. As beautiful as the picture is, it is also terrible. West theatre of death disguised as life. This is a metaphor, big sarcophagus many forms of live. Through this one can look on the history of extinct species, historical violence and genocides.The mechanism of annihilation of live is invisible but alive”. (…)

German critics bristled at your Holocaust phrases.

I feel I have put my fingers into the wounds of the German body. In the play there is a chorus of mothers who survived the Holocaust. They speak of the Holocaust. And the mechanisms that bring it forth again and again. These mothers also say: history repeats itself and nothing repeats itself as often as Auschwitz.

It is not something unique? 

Fundamental mechanism of annihilation of life is always the same. Auschwitz kein Ende, as Heiner Muller said. Its central point of my work since years. Never again can always turning into Auschwitz no end, but frankly speaking, nobody listen to the survivors. (…)
In the final scene, SONG OF ALL BEINGS, we hear live voices singing an old Jewish song about a calf going to the slaughterhouse. But we can also recognise Joseph Schmidt’s voice, rhythms of African tribes, kids… A chorus of people and animals, living and dead. Such a chorus never rests. Even the life that has been killed, the still life, speaks to us. It is an utopia. An artistic and social one. That’s what I am working on.

Gunnar Decker, RESURRECTION OF THE BREATHING BODY, ND-ACTUELL 

To see a chorus, especially one as highly dynamic as this one on stage – becomes a sign of hope.

Doris Meierhenrich, A CHORUS MANIFESTO BY GÓRNICKA: SONGS FOR A BETTER WORLD, BERLINER ZEITUNG 

Manifesto immediately calls out everything that exists: the living and the dead, animals, plants, bits and bytes, a “choir of mothers who survived the Holocaust”, Bobby, the stuffed gorilla in the natural history museum and various, digital hordes and tyrants.

Gunnar Decker, RESURRECTION IF THE BREATHING BODY, ND-ACTUELL 

This choir from the ensemble of the Gorki Theater is highly virtuosic and absolut precise. The individual voices multiply into a powerful trio or quartet, sometimes with each other, sometimes against each other, the voices act like instruments in a symphonic concert. Occasionally they overturn when everyone is speaking at the same time: a well- calculated cacophony. If you wanted to describe the subject of this choir more precisely, one would have to speak of a postmodern requiem. The viewer is not supposed to be instructed about the pain, but rather to be made insecure about what he thinks he knows.

Katrin Bettina Muller, TAZ.DE

“STILL LIFE by Marta Górnicka in Maxim Gorki Theater conjures up the choir as a force against the collapse of society”

In precisely timed choreography the eight performers call us to change, because what this choir sees is capitalism, racism, colonialism and patriarchy. Everywhere: violence. While talking about all catastrophes, the choir is bubbling over with joy in playing.

Sotera Fornaro, THE BIRTH OF THE TRAGEDY OF THE SPIRIT OF THE CHORUS, VISIONIDELTRAGICO. IT