Life and Times – Episode 2

Nature Theater of Oklahoma — performance, musical

  • © Anna Stöcher/Burgtheater Wien
    (c) Anna Stöcher/Burgtheater Wien
  • © Anna Stöcher/Burgtheater Wien
    (c) Anna Stöcher/Burgtheater Wien
  • © Anna Stöcher/Burgtheater Wien
    (c) Anna Stöcher/Burgtheater Wien

With a notable conceptual stringency combined with an excessive joy in making theater, the New York off-off-Broadway troupe Nature Theater of Oklahoma continues their epic musical saga.
A first person narrator, who increasingly becomes a collective voice and seems to speak from our collective memory, talks about her life from age eight to fourteen. The changing body (can doing gymnastics enlarge the breasts?), the first love (forever!), the first cigarette smoked on the sly: all the stories that make us what we are today.

Like Episode 1, invited as one of the ten best productions of the year to Berlin’s Theatertreffen, the second part of the epic—a total of ten episodes are planned—is based on a telephone conversation in which the 34-year-old Kirstin Worrall tells the story of her entire, rather average life. With nothing omitted—all the mistakes and hemming and hewing included—this unusual libretto was then set to music using the program Garage Band, bringing back the sound of the 1980s. With their customarily heroic performance and extravagance, the Nature Theater continues its series of highly unusual theatrical pieces, beginning with a very simple question: Can you tell me the story of your life?

Following Romeo and Juliet, Rambo, and NoDice, the artist duo Pavol Liska and Kelly Cooper have developed a contemporary Bildungsroman whose individual episodes are now successfully touring the world.

Minimalist music, live art, Broadway-Drive, popular theater, or animation: for each new episode, Liska and Cooper choose a different theatrical form to stage the sometimes banal, sometimes inscrutable everyday stories of an American girl. Life and Times is the most entertaining work of conceptual art from the past decade.

 


nach einem Telefongespräch mit Kristin Worrall
Props —
Peter Nigrini
Dramaturgy —
Florian Malzacher

Shows

Location
Premiere
— 30. August 2012
Further dates
— 31. August 1. September
Duration
— 2 h
Intros
— 30. August: 30 August: 19.30
Tickets
— 20 / 30 €
Reduced prices start at 10,00 €
August
  • Thu30Aug
    20.00
    Life and Times – Episode 2 on 30. August 2012 at 8.00 PM
  • Fri31Aug
    20.00
    Life and Times – Episode 2 on 31. August 2012 at 8.00 PM
September
  • Sat 1Sep
    20.00
    Life and Times – Episode 2 on 1. September 2012 at 8.00 PM
Presented by PACT Zollverein for Ruhrtriennale.
A production of Nature Theater of Oklahoma and Burgtheater Wien, coproduced by Kampnagel Hamburg, Festival d’Avignon, Théâtre de la Ville Paris, Kaaitheater Brussels, and ROSAS. Life and Times: Episode 2 is made possible by the funding of New England Foundation for Arts, National Theater Pilot and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.