So, I was there. It was a 200 km ride (and the same retour) but it was worth it.
The performance is based upon the idea of the director Martin Wuttke of the Berlin theatre "Volksbuehne" is goes beyond the content of Solaris. It discusses the theoriy of cognition, limitations of quantum physics, philosophy of thinking and more. Language was German.
The "stage" is a hangar of app. 100 x 100 squaremeters and 15 mtrs high. The huge gate was wide open and the actors also used part of the airfield, up to 100 mtrs away. The audience was placed on a tribune inside the hangar facing the gate. In the right portion of the gate there was a videowall with three screens, one on top of the other. The cabins and the library were semitransparent greenhouses, distributed across the scenery. A number of cameras in each greenhouse and out on the airfield were managed by a technical life crew and their pictures shown
on the videowall. The blue and red suns were spotlights coming from the outside of the hangar thru it's glass walls.
The piece started with Kris' arrival at the Solaris station and his attemps to find Gibarian. He is also confronted with Harey. Later, there are two actresses playing Harey and both appear on stage at the same time. Further, the Solaris ocean is played by a man who is always around: a clever way to show the omnipresence of it. Solaris also takes part in the numerous conversations on cognition, philosophy and physics.
The core discussion goes as follows: In the physics of black holes there is the assumption that all known forulas of whatever theory only work outside the black hole. In it, forces, gravity and everything becomes infinite. With infinity you can't do any calculations anymore. The whole theory breaks down. Between the outside (were physiscs is just fine) and the inside the must be a sharp border, the so calles black-shield border. The analogy here is that the humans brought all their culture, knowledge, philosophy and science to the Solaris staion orbiting Solaris. But they can't recognize what the ocean actually is. They are at a black-shield border and the ocean is sort of a black hole.
For example the guests consist of neutrinos. Neutrinos are extremely light and superfast particles. The question is how the ocean could slow down these superfast particles to form atoms out of them. And that without any machinery or even a thought. It's just an ocean.
Another issue raised was the questions if it would be possible to prove that the crew members don't dream all this. It lead to the works of Kant about cognition of the "thing itself" (Are we able to recognize the "thing itself" as a whole or are we only recognizing the part of it that we are able to understand and see and consider that part to be the whole thing?)
After all, two hours of brainfood of the best kind. They handed out a program brochure with a comic-like digest of the gameplay. I will keep it side by side to my Solaris book and DVDs. I took some pics and will post that on my website, when finished.
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positive dragon
