Jokes included

“Professions of faith in the 21st century” is what the Berlin-based independent theatre troupe Nico and the Navigators term their new creation, which was commissioned by the Weimar Arts Festival. Or an "oratorio as image theatre", based on Gioachino Rossini's "Petite Messe solennelle". The mixture of singing, acting, dance, slapstick and tragicomedy can even set in motion a music theatre version of a Latin Catholic ritual mass, as happened during its premiere at the Theater Erfurt. The production will be shown in the middle of November in Berlin's Radialsystem, and in April and June 2012 in Dijon, Paris und Bregenz. For two hours non-stop the performance troupe “navigates” its way through the different parts of Rossini's mass with all the weight of expression of outlandish physical and image theatre. Thirteen years ago Nicola Hümpel und Oliver Proske, the founders of this collective of “whole-body poets” began to develop their aesthetic at the Bauhaus Dessau. Their “Menschenbilder” cycle, performed in Berlin's Sophiensäle, earned them their first positive reviews. Now, following performances of the works of Schubert and Handel, they have taken on the old maestro Rossini's mass, which he composed 34 years after his last opera. In it melodic fervour and elegance sit nonchalantly alongside simple accompanying figures played on two pianos. Nico and the Navigators have created a kind of theatrical theology: scenes of the Iconoclastic Controversy concerning faith, heresy and superstition, the imperatives of doubt and dichotomy, questions of religion, ritual, humanity, yearning and psychological violence in a Christian utopia – all with jokes included. Such “professions of faith” are not intended to answer anything, but simply to pose questions. Nicola Hümpel's conception and direction of the piece, in combination with Oliver Proske's set, which comes apart to form various stage props, conjure up a round dance of seemingly everyday people caught up in elaborately stylised or trashily exaggerated images and sketches, which don't so much duplicate and update the mass texts from 'Kyrie Eleison' to 'Agnus Dei' as associatively fray them and set counterpoints to them. Movement is everywhere: four soloists and eight choristers are constantly coming and going, even the three instruments, two pianos (SooJin Anjou, David Zobel) and a harmonium (Jan Gerdes), are pulled hither and thither over the stage. Even the sprightly British conductor Nicholas Jenkins, former assistant to Marc Minkowski, keeps altering his position and letting himself be drawn into the action. Improvisation is one of the troupe's principles and as such is practiced in exercises and workshops: singing voice, role play, individuality are all equally important. In amidst the different parts of Rossini's mass, there are often episodes slipped in which feature the characters as different examples of situations found in life and faith: a priest, psychiatrist, shaman, a rationalist or scientist, a down-at-heel mafioso, a seraphic angel figure dressed in bright red (a bizarrely eddying Yui Kawaguchi, who moves with agile dance steps): they are all symbols of the schism of human existence, of ambivalence, of the abyss of feelings.

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