Now they’ve even broken through the fifth wall
Bertold Brecht broke through the fourth wall. With his epic theatre, he opened up the ‘peep-box’ and unsettled the audience in their supposedly secure position as reception sponges who sympathised with the hero and feared the antagonist. Now everything was to change. The teacher was no longer supposed to tell the pupils a story so that they would become better people, but the convoluted, often fragmented events demanded critical examination and a willingness to act. Nico and the Navigators have nothing to do with classical music theatre either. ‘The Navigators’ principle has always been the superimposition of stage and human images,’ says Oliver Proske, set designer and technical director. ‘That's why I see my work as both an invitation and a challenge for the production.’
Nico and the Navigators - a flexible collective
The ensemble, which was founded by Oliver Proske and director Nicola Hümpel at the Bauhaus Dessau in 1998, has now also broken through the fifth wall: The stage lid has been lifted, pointing the way up into the spheres of the digital world. ‘The expansion of the stage into digital space was a logical step forward - the fulfilment of a scenographic longing,’ explains Proske enthusiastically. The joy of experimentation is in the DNA of the flexible collective. ‘In retrospect, the choice of name seems like a good omen: the Navigators find their own way while walking, instead of following well-trodden paths,’ says Nicola Hümpel. ‘Our method is guided improvisation, a joint process in which we search for attitudes and situations through dialogue. The aim is to identify and exaggerate the characteristic physicality.’
Compulsion and freedom
The ensemble has also been present on film in the 25 years of its work. Together with the Kuss Quartet, Nico and the Navigators took advantage of the Beethoven anniversary in 2020 to translate Beethoven's late works into a contemporary formal language and stage them under the title ‘Force & Freedom’ for the culture channel Arte. The title is based on the motto ‘tantôt libre, tantôt recherchée’ (‘partly free, partly strict’), which is borrowed from the ‘Great Fugue’ op. 133. The circumstances of the production show how close the words compulsion and freedom were to reality at the time. A previously planned stage production could not take place due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the premiere at the Schwetzingen Festival had to be cancelled.