The dance between man and machine

Even staircase seats had to be given away in Erlangen, so great was the rush in places: The 19th International Figure Theater Festival, which runs until May 17, started in the metropolitan area at the weekend. First impressions from an all-round full program. 400 years ago, in Shakespeare's time, a woman apparently already looked old as a rock at the age of 40: "Furrows run through the corridor of beauty," as it says in sonnet number 2, and the eyes are "sunken in." Only those with a youthful child of their own could escape the curse of old age. The famous poems of the English master are thus - at least in part - timelessly topical. Nevertheless, it is bold to bring them to the stage as puppet theater. The Puppentheater Halle dared to do so at the start of the festival in Nuremberg's Tafelhalle, supported by the group Nico and the Navigators: in any case, not a devoted bow to the outsized Shakespeare; one actor even reports half-sided paralysis while reading his "incomprehensible, foggy and hopping sonnets". These much-admired, much-translated gems are not infrequently incomprehensible in the German version. But this is due to the relative lack of expression in our language compared to English. The co-production from Halle therefore provides the original versions, brilliantly spoken and acted by British comedian Adrian Gillott. But the German actors Nils Dreschke and Sebastian Fortak are also not to be sneezed at in the visual, scenic poetry conversion. And Steffi König, also an exquisite puppeteer, recalls Nina Hagen with powerful vocals. The one-man orchestra Sebastian Herzfeld drives the time-honored sonnets with modern but congenial music: a small multimedia event with fantastic ideas, born from very simple means - for example loose parquet boards...

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