Obsessed with food

Falckenberg students serve 'seconds' in the workroom Food is as sociable as it is vital. That's why Lübeck director Nicola Hümpel is now dedicating an entire play to food and drink: Together with the second-year students of the Otto Falckenberg School of Performing Arts, she is creating three evenings about eating - without eating - in the Werkraum of the Kammerspiele. The protagonists talk about different forms of nutrition or haute cuisine, compare the shelf life due to preservatives with the mortality of starving children and question the false representation of food in advertising. In the process, the actors slip into roles that could hardly be more different - from the schizophrenic macrobiotic aunt to the hoarding food obsessive. With her play, Hümpel creates a 'radically poetic landscape of thought that invites the audience to move through it with their experiences and feelings'. The audience should get involved as much as the acting students themselves. For in the collaboration with Hümpel, they did not slip into a role she had given them, but invented their characters all by themselves. Only then was the text written for each of them. This is what makes the characters so true. Words rarely contradict facial expressions and body language. So it doesn't matter that some ambitious young talent still lacks expression. The dialogues are witty, but always substantial, never absurd. Even Descartes' rationalistic dualism is quoted and the existence of his substances is replaced by essence. Things get musical at the end, when the students join acappella in a chorus of smacking and burping, while the thunderous applause from the audience in the room seems never-ending. 'Nachschlag' is an invigorating performance that appeals to all the senses.

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