a (Kind of) Requiem
by
Lulu obermayer
Date: Friday 31st March
Time: 16:00 - 00:00 / Durational un-ticketed (Booking Guide)
Venue: CCA | Creative Lab
Accessibility Info: S / (BSL) (Access Guide)
Age Rating: n/a
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
(a kind of) Requiem is a durational performance based on A German Requiem, a large-scale work for choir and orchestra composed by Johannes Brahms between 1865-1868.
Intended as a ‘Menschenwerk’ (a work of humankind) suggests that Brahms wished to offer this solace to all listeners, regardless of their own religious beliefs or backgrounds. According to his account the composition’s objective is to transform sorrow to joy providing comfort for the living who have lost loved ones, things and places.
Picking up on this theme and further developing it Lulu Obermayer will create a solo, where she directs and choreographs 20 year old singer Noa Calluy. Reducing the large-scale work to one voice and body, who replaces the choir and orchestra, the solitary and isolating experience of loss is exhibited. An emotional landscape is created, where the raw labor of mourning is performed and aestheticised to provide a non secular collective mourning experience.
The audience is invited to stay, to witness and to be transformed by this complex musical and emotional toil.
A co-production by Lulu Obermayer with FREISCHWIMMEN, the production platform for performance and theatre, supported by brut Wien, FFT Düsseldorf, Gessnerallee Zürich, HochX Theater and Live Art München, LOFFT - DAS THEATER Leipzig, Schwankhalle Bremen, SOPHIENSÆLE Berlin and Theater Rampe Stuttgart, under the management of SOPHIENSÆLE GmbH. FREISCHWIMMEN is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media through the programme "Promoting Connections" of the Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste e.V. (Federal Association of Independent Performing Arts).
Credits:
Artistic Director, Concept, Research: Lulu Obermayer
Performer: Noa Calluy
Sounddesign: Alex Mackay
Content Warning: This work deals with loss and grief.
Lulu Obermayer
Lulu Obermayer, born 1989 in Munich, trained as an actress at Lee Strasberg Institute and Stella Adler Studio in New York.
In February 2017 she graduated from MA Solo Dance and Authorship at Inter-University Center for Dance Berlin (University of the Arts, The University of Performing Arts Ernst Busch)
Prior she studied BA hons Contemporary Performance Practice at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (Glasgow) and Dramaturgy at University of Music and Theatre »Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdi« in Leipzig.
Her performances have been presented at Theater Neumarkt (Zurich), DeSingel (Antwerp), Sophiensaele and HAU2(Berlin), Steirischer Herbst (Graz), Münchner Kammerspiele and Hoch X Theater für Live Art, Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles), Batard Festival at Beursschouwburg (Brussels), among others. In 2020 she was nominated for the Caroline Neuber Prize and for Forecast Platform. Since autumn September 2022 she is part of the freischwimmen network.
Credit Agustín Farias