Sophiensæle: Nico and the Navigators go in search of happiness with “Wo Du nicht bist" (Where You Are Not) At one point in "Wo Du nicht bist” someone says: “You only live once. But when you do it right, isn’t one time enough?” But how does one live “right”? Does to live mean to suffer? To learn? To be happy? Can it be that the only one who is happy is he who is not living? Questions with which people have busied themselves for all time. Nico and the Navigators too offer no answers – and when, to be taken with scepticism. But the posing of questions is an art in itself and in this the stars of the Off-Theatre scene prove to be absolutely virtuosic: and once again with their piece regarding happiness, which involves seventeen performers and is their largest production thus far. For years Nicola (Nico) Hümpel and her multi-national ensemble have been passed from region to region and this time the première of "Wo du nicht bist" was at the Bregenzer Festspiele (Bregenz Festival). Now the piece is playing at the Sophiensæle in Berlin, the real home of this cult group, grounded in 1998 at Bauhaus Dessau, which, due to the great demand elsewhere, happens here only sporadically. The quest for happiness takes place in Oliver Proske’s grey hill country. A part of the stage set consists of a kind of music box that is wound by an actor. The lid opens and offers up a small orchestra. Franui, the East Tirolean group with which the Navigators are working for the first time, plays Schubert utilising the instrumentation of a village band. "There where you are not, that’s where happiness is", a line from Schubert’s song "Der Wanderer" describes the constant longing for another place and is the source of the title for the piece. Andreas Schett and his band of dulcimer, tuba, violin and saxophone make over, shorten, and extend motifs from Schubert’s Lieder, while Nico and the Navigators work a variety of interpretations of happiness in a similar way - from Aristotle through Camus to Thomas Bernhard. Director Nicola Hümpel and her group make associative theatre, and that goes for the production too, developed as it was from improvisations involving performers, light, sound and space. And for the audience response as well: the various scenarios are designed to create room for thought. Many paths lead to happiness. Props such as a ball, a bucket, a sled may represent a happy childhood; the apple, which at one point is threatened with a golf club, rolling across the stage stands for the expulsion from Paradise. A large book, which Anne Paulicevich almost manages to crawl inside of, denotes knowledge. An actor with a protective helmet prowls the stage – life as a construction site. Miyoko Urayama throws soybeans about in an Asian springtime ritual. One consults cards or looks to the stars, bursts balloons or washes bliss away with water. And one sees happiness in despair - a desperate at his own burial – for then the others are unhappy. It all unfolds in the rapid interplay between slapstick and pose, wild frolic and sad pauses - surprising changes of mood create the comic effect. The spectator does not come away scot-free: lines like "You work and work only because you lack the talent for happiness” certainly can be painful. Happiness is thus not liveable. Because we strive for the big happiness we often disregard the little ones. Sometimes an evening in the theatre counts among the latter. This one should not be passed over.

Bregenz is a city of impressive ugliness. How an idyllic spot on the banks of the Lake Constance can be destroyed by bad architecture is to be studied here. The only exception is Peter Zumthor’s simple and elegant art house. The Bregenzer Festspiele present their “Troubador” at Europe’s largest lakeside theatre seating seven thousand people. On stage is a fire-spitting oil-refinery upon the staircase and scaffolding and bridges of which hundreds do their business - Verdi as frivolous Musical. But the Festspiele has its experimental track as well: “Kunst aus der Zeit” (Art of the Times) in short KAZ. They produce and co-produce productions with the Hamburg Thalia Theatre (Schwab’s “Präsidentinnen“) and the Berlin fringe-scene. The new project by Nico & the Navigators, “wo du nicht bist” (where you are not), initially planned for the Ruhr Triennial, has its Première, after a year’s delay, on the Werkstatt stage. This is the biggest project that the Navigators have so far navigated – and it is a triumph! Together with the marvellous Tirolean group Franui they have developed a piece about happiness, and Franz Schubert, the Great Misery himself, is godfather. Andreas Schett and Markus Kraler have worked, skeletonised, celebrated, and developed further eighteen Schubert Lieder, fitted them out with all the trimmings such as dulcimer, accordion and tuba, and have realised an imaginary, folksy, alienated song-cycle for which Nico and the Navigators have then devised scenarios and images. As usual they don’t come to a theme directly, but flirt with it, playfully circling round with anecdotes and associations. Happiness is not so easy to grasp hold of - like a fish it slips the through fingers and is only to be recognised afterwards anyhow. When someone puts a grape in his mouth to represent each New Year resolution something should actually come of it. Or one spits it right in the face of the New Year, embodied here by a compliant and bewildered contemporary. The scene with Verena Schonlau and Patric Schott, accompanied by Franui’s gently pleading songs is as poetic and comic as any melancholy bliss. But happiness can exist as well in the childlike amusement of dressing oneself up, in swimming, in reading books or even in putting on the act of being really miserable in the loneliness of the big emotion. All of this is touched upon, fantasised over and made into riddles, at times fairytale cryptic, at times wide-awake and mean. “You work and work because you lack the talent for happiness” someone says on one occasion, and immediately you feel caught. This is a serious piece, but there are wonderful moments of freedom and yes even joy as when someone springs stark naked in the air, like a postal pigeon or an eagle; and when everyone knows in the end that “most likely each one of us is as happy as he has decided to be”; or, drawing on Thomas Bernhard, the dialectic is everything: “He was afraid to lose his desperation”. Happiness can be its very opposite. “Wo du nicht bist” is a small masterpiece of poetry and defiance. When Anne Paulicevich plays her whole family or Miyoko Urayama performs a springtime ritual throwing soybeans about, when Christoph Glaubacker whines “Honestly, I don’t find this funny any more” and insulted explains why, then the audience is at the peak of its enjoyment. Everything remains in a state of shimmering irresolution, is full with secrets and perspicacity. The dimensions of the evening almost exceed the limits for a free ensemble, but the eleven musicians and eight actors win through via a heightened self-sacrifice. And Oliver Proske’s geometric staging would honour any big stage. He places the musicians in a huge metallic box wound like a music box which can go up and down finally opening up like an oyster to reveal its pearl. Colourfully and magically illuminated by Peter Meier a large walkway and a hill become, with the swing of the hips, the scene of action made of happiness and sulphur. How will all of this be transferred to the technically less equipped Sophiensaele for tonight’s Berlin première? Hümpel, Proske and their helpers have overcome such difficulties in the past.

The world premiere of 'Wo Du nicht bist' by the Berlin cult theater formation 'Nico and the Navigators gave the Bregenz Festival audience a wonderful evening on Friday, which, away from conventional narrative theater, conjured up a fireworks display of acting shooting stars in the theater sky. The eight characters stroll perfectly in terms of speech and movement through a stage by Oliver Proske, which is a kind of landscape of thought. There's a small bridge, plus a pavilion where the exceptional musicians of Franui brush Schubert songs against the grain. There are also two hills rising from the theater floor, which lie there like two breasts and over which the actors throw their episodic slapsticks at the audience. The title of the play is taken from one of Schubert's most famous songs, 'der Wanderer'. In free associative spurts, happiness is scenically pondered. For this, views on happiness from Aristotle (happiness is virtue) to Albert Camus (the self must find its happiness) are quoted. The actual theatrical situation, however, stages a search for happiness taken from the immediate present. Everyone is chasing his personal happiness, everyone remains infinitely lonely in this search. The tenderness is always ambiguous. Despite hard work, the ensemble, captivating in every detail, seems effortless in its performance. Improvisation is an essential component of the working method.

"Wo du nicht bist" premiered successfully at festival Bregenz (APA) - The Berlin theater group "Nico and the Navigators" sought - and found - happiness in Bregenz last Friday evening. In the ambitious festival series "Kunst aus der Zeit" (KAZ), the world premiere of the play "Wo du nicht bist" successfully passed over the workshop stage of the Festspielhaus. The audience signaled full approval and gave the Berlin troupe and the East Tyrolean ensemble "Franui" enthusiastic applause - not least a vital ingredient for the experience of happiness of actors and musicians. The Festival's co-production with "Nico and the Navigators" will be repeated this Saturday evening. The next world premiere on the Bregenz Werkstattbühne will be "Radek," the new opera by Richard Dünser, with Georg Nigl in the title role, on August 12. "Wo du nicht bist" (directed by Nicola Hümpel) defies any genre characterization, questions the scientific view of the world and deals with ideas and definitions of happiness in different cultures. It questions whether and to what extent cultural origins and current surroundings influence personal happiness. Elements of acting, dancing and singing are combined to form a whole. In the scenic miniatures of the music and picture theater project, the eight members of "Nico and the Navigators" provide no recipes, but food for thought. "Where you are not" does not tempt the viewer to take a voyeuristic look, but to think about happiness, and thus about life as a whole. The Bregenz premiere was developed in Innsbruck and at the Sophiensälen in Berlin, the home of "Nico and the Navigators". The reduced stage design (Oliver Poske) was also created in Berlin. The music for the scene, inspired by Schubert, was contributed by Andreas Schett and the Tyrolean formation "Franui," with instrumentation ranging from violin to zither and dulcimer to saxophone and tuba. "Dort, wo du nicht bist, dort ist das Glück" - with this sentence ends one of the most famous Schubert songs, "Der Wanderer", Schett reminds of the musical starting point.

Ambiguous emotional and weather situations hold opportunities. Nico and the Navigators show this in their play "Wo du nicht bist" in the Sophiensælen. A man lets a woman pull on his cigarette with tender slowness, as if it were the longed-for kiss. There is a sled on which two sit as close as only fat friends do. Then the sled is shouldered as a satchel. The friendship is over or the winter. So it is in the play "Where you are not" by Nico and the Navigators. In the moment of farewell, despite all the misfortune, there remains a small piece of happiness with which to remember, to hide, to put off. More metamorphosis than in this piece is impossible. Since their first work in the Sophiensælen in 1999, Nico and the Navigators have toured abroad a lot, and because they now have financial as well as personnel support there, the productions are getting bigger, lusher, more international. "Where you are not" was created in cooperation between the Bregenz Festival and the Sophiensæle. Soon it will go to Spain and Hungary. A guest performance tour of the USA is planned. Because they are under heightened cult suspicion. Because everyone can understand the nonverbal body language of the performers, who are investigating how it works: to be happy, when the most beautiful moment in life passes by again and the broadest smile becomes a poisonous arrow. The grapes that a performer has just put in her mouth for every good New Year's resolution, she spits in her lover's face at the first argument. "Where you are not" is a typical Nico-and-the-Navigators evening: a bit artificial, a bit cranky and melancholic. A slipping of scenarios into each other. Things cut up moods and create new ones. A red ball rolls lonely across the stage, which in the soft light one just thought was a dune landscape by the sea. In it the eight Nicos, with hats, windswept hairstyles, dresses and suits like on a trip in the 20s, but still in soft-edge optics of today. But "Wo du nicht bist" is also an evening of Schubert songs, the leitmotif of which comes from the "Wanderer" song. A man from the mountains comes to the sea, where he confesses, "I am a stranger everywhere." This story runs as a common narrative thread through the evening, which begins like a shared excursion to the sea. Groups form and break away. Miyoko Urayama, the Japanese among the performers, eats alone with a rice bowl and chopsticks. Everyone is an outsider whom the collective repels - and always takes in again, because the group around Nicola Hümpel makes theater that, for all its quiet pain, is also born of nest warmth. The homeland combo "Franui" accompanies the evening with various Schubert songs orchestrated for violin, guitar, zither, brass and dulcimer. "The equipment of a dance band is suitable for the reproduction of funeral marches," describe "Franui" insights of their work, and just as the Nicos seek the moment between pain and happiness, the music sounds unobtrusively from the in-between. The musicians sit in Oliver Proskes stage in a closed box, which is initially cranked up like a music box. In front of them, on the corrugated plastic stage, the landscapes change depending on the light, like in a weather house: summer dunes, snow hills, all-year-round muddy weather. But the rain-soaked as well as cheerful departure of all participants conveys the realization that ambiguous weather as well as emotional situations need not end in self-pity or callousness. Once again, Nico and the Navigators defy it all with vivacious liberation. At the Sophiensælen, on 12, 13, 15 and 16. 8. at 8 p.m. each night.