AUS DEM INNENLEBEN EINES STAUBSAUGERBEUTELS
FROM THE INNER LIFE OF A VACUUM CLEANER BAG

Dust is everywhere. It’s in the crevices of your computer keyboard, on the leaves of your yucca plant, in the fabric of your smartest outfit. No matter how and how often we remove it, dust always comes back. As a steadfast companion of all living things, it reminds us of the future which points to death. Or better, to the continuation of life in another form. A vision in which the remains of my body unite with the remains of a table edge and a sock.
Recognizable under the microscope in all their variety and multiplicity, dust particles float through the air like stars through space until they finally sink down onto surfaces in the shapes of practically weightless webs, dust bunnies or fluff. Later we find these in the vacuum cleaner bag: the grimy, grey, micro archive of our everyday life. Of who and what is it made of? Do strong emotions also end up as dust? How can such decay be traced? Who is responsible for it? And, by the way, who exactly actually cleans this theatre and what does any of this have to do with operetta?

Set in the big vacuum cleaner bag of the brand “Black Box”, äöü presents a progressive theatre work in electromagnetic operetta costumes about the very big questions of form and content, life and death, wage labour and gender, magic and engineering, theatre and performance.

Concept & performance: äöü (Patricia Bechtold / Johannes Karl)

Stage & costume & performance: Eunsung Yang

Special effects & performance: Carlos Franke

Performance: Sarah Wessels

Dramaturgy: Franziska Schneeberger

Mentorship: Frauke Meyer, Bernhard Siebert

Photos: äöü, Franziska Schneeberger, Eunsung Yang


A production by äöü (Patricia Bechtold / Johannes Karl) in co-production with the FFT Düsseldorf commissioned by “west off – Theaternetzwerk Rheinland”. Supported by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the cultural offices of the cities of Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf, as well as the Hessian Theatre Academy, the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies Giessen and the Cultural Office of the City of Giessen.


west-off.de

Premiere: 26. October 2019 at the Theater im Ballsaal Bonn.

Presented at FFT Düsseldorf, studiobühne Cologne, studioNAXOS Frankfurt am Main.
Invited to the FAVORITEN Festival 2020, Hauptsache Frei #7 Hamburg, Fritz-Wortelmann-Preis 2021 Bochum, MADE.Festival 2022 Hessen, RADAR Festival Potsdam 2022 and Festival Expeditionen ins junge Figurentheater 2023, Leipzig.

Press:

»The ambivalence of chaos and aesthetics alternate wonderfully: the fight against dust and equally the beauty it can leave behind. […] »From the Inner Life of a Vacuum Cleaner Bag« […] impresses with artistic abstraction and delicate poetry to the point of abstruseness.«
(Bonner Rundschau, 29. Oktober 2019)