Kesselhaus Theater-Ensemble: Frau im Wald
Following a longstanding tradition, director and theater educator Simone Lüdi is presenting a new work at the Friedlinger Kesselhaus this year with currently eight acting talents. On behalf of the cultural office, she has been rehearsing with her ensemble for many months. The result of this intensive preparation phase will be performed over three evenings at the end of October. The play "Frau im Wald" by Julia Haenni will be presented.
In it, we see Mrs. Meier as she goes through her to-do list in her head in the morning: she has to pick up rolls, find the rabbit that has escaped, and go to the dentist. But the day unfolds very differently than expected. Her car is gone, and the rabbit lies dead outside her window. Suddenly, Mrs. Meier's seemingly endless to-do list falls apart in her mind, intertwining with memories, fears, and the voice on the radio telling stories of missing women.
In front of a stage design made of piled-up chairs, the audience is confronted with a cacophony of thoughts, experiences, and fantasies. The protagonists follow traces that lead from Mrs. Meier's apartment to the garden, to the women at the tram stop, into the forest, and present a multifaceted piece about mental load, where everyday life and states of emergency blur together. Questions arise such as: What is real? Who is speaking here, actually? And: When does reality end, where does the dream world begin?
What feels like an individual problem for Mrs. Meier affects many in reality. Julia Haenni, the author of the play, also describes the attempt to portray the individual in the many and the many in the individual: "The cacophony of voices shows the overwhelm and simultaneously represents the addition of the various problems and opinions."
The production of the Kesselhaus ensemble unites this tension between individual overwhelm and mental load as a collective problem and invites the audience to question what happens when we no longer perceive Mrs. Meier merely as an individual but assume that there are many Mrs. Meiers.
Under the direction of Simone Lüdi (Assistant: Laura Simonelli), Anja Meyer, Alexandra Krimmer, Eva Winter, Claudia Palladino, Barbara Wellinger, Doris Leimeier, Timm Rosburg, and Liwia Ricken perform.
Julia Haenni
The author of the play was born in 1988 in the Canton of Aargau and studied theater directing at Zurich University of the Arts as well as theater studies and German studies in Bern and Berlin. Her work "Frau im Wald" premiered in 2018. Since 2022, Haenni has been working freelance, leading workshops, and teaching at the theater department of Zurich University of the Arts. Her works have received numerous awards, including the Bern Literature Prize in 2020 and, in 2024, the German Youth Theater Prize for "Angst oder Hase."
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