Projects

»forest/machine/slaughterhouse-prayer«

Performance for two actors on a text by Mehdi Moradpour

She and He, possibly a couple, posses, crave and destroy each other, recognize themselves in the other.
A battle of the sexes. Love and hatred keeps them trapped, power and violence are their heritage and their present. Their language is a carnal anthem, a sensuous song of praise, a phantasma, an accusation, driven by lust and rejection.
A dance, a litany, a prayer – a forest/machine/slaughterhouse-prayer.

The work of Iranian-born author Mehdi Moradpour focuses on interhuman communication in modern society. In »forest/machine/slaughterhouse-prayer« he intensifies his view on the world to a carnal poetic text, filled with strong compact images. Love has been brought down to a profit based, calculated machine that has to be fed and never gets enough. Life has no real value anymore. People are numbers in calculated wars. Items in a global economy.
In this context the lyrical I tries to put his demands towards an imaginary opponent into words, expresses his/her desires in drastic verbal images, seeks closeness and boundaries, in order to be able to claim his/her own individuality. A text like that required a special form to be moulded into.

Therefore the actors built an inner world out of very personal and direct feelings and images, with which they improvised their actions. They’ve worked with Grotowski and Butoh to achieve this physical state.
The text is performed three times, in different shapes and colours, fenced in by three musical intersections.

Associations of the actors and the composer

ASSOCIATIONS/MATERIALS
Forest, the hunt, youth – body/water/gender/game/air/spirit/dream/glass/sand
Machine, battle, warriors – war/dance/love/head/paper/rationality/metal
Slaughterhouse, mass, death – city/blood/sex/animalistic/fire/wood/leather/skin

COLOURS
black (forest), blue (machine), brown (slaughterhouse)