Die Dreizehnjährigen – Sep 2020
Scenography and life created video

Forum Hfmt
Hamburg, Germany

Text: Marieluise Fleißer
Direction: Lorenz Nolting
Costume Design: Kora Hamm, Ida Bekić
Dramaturgy: Sarah Heinzel, Paul Marwitz
Cast: Christine Korfant, Pauline Rénevier, Gerben de Jong

A blue, cloud-filled plastic landscape opens the scene that I designed for “Die Dreizehnjährigen.” Actress Pauline Renivier drifts gently into view, floating in a hut that appears almost animated as it descends from the rigging. The Bavarian idyll feels like a kitschy video game, a children’s TV channel, a glossy travel guide.

“Die Dreizehnjährigen,” a text by Marieluise Fleißer, directed by Lorenz Nolting, tells the story of a group of children breaking free from the confines of their small-town world. In chapters partly rewritten by Nolting – filled with violence, excess, eroticism, and trance – they resist the limitations of their environment. The scenography as well as the life created videos comment on this flight from old patterns while exposing the fragility of the constructs on which such inherited narratives are built.