SCHLEEF, ein Vorspiel (SCHLEEF, a Prelude)

Gathered around the grave of the great Einar Schleef, the eternally grieving, the students who cannot let go, encounter a messenger of life – and thus begins a game and a dance around the grave. How does one approach such a phenomenal body of work? They find Schleef’s play MÜTTER (Mothers), which is about the war against the city of Thebes that resulted from a sibling quarrel. In this play, several mothers frantically demand the return of the bodies of their sons who have been killed in the war so that they may be given a proper burial. They ask King Theseus for help, but this also means war. The students act out the play not only as if they wanted to embody it but also as if doing so will bring them as close to the master as possible – as if they might act it out until they themselves fall into the grave.

Bernd Freytag worked together for many years with the playwright, director, stage designer, painter, and actor Einar Schleef, who was born in Sangerhausen in 1944 and died in 2001. Together with RambaZamba actor Moritz Höhne and a three-member choir, Freytag attempts to approach both the key issues that Schleef addressed in his lifetime – issues that are astonishingly so important once again today – and Schleef’s way of thinking: a prelude.