Journey into the Unknown
a musical fairytale for 1 actress, 1 dancer and 3 musicians
A child is born and before it has had a chance to live it falls so ill that death comes to snatch it away. The mother despairs because she finds the child's fate so unfair. She begins a journey into death to reclaim her child.
In the garden of death, each human life grows as a plant. The mother finds her child's weak life in a small crocus. She threatens death that she will tear out other plants if he doesn't let her child live. But death shows her how much life she would destroy in doing this, the fate of her own child included. But which fate was it: the happy person who dies in old age after a satisfying life or the miserable one who chooses the wrong path?
Death is probably one of the most difficult concepts for people to deal with, especially for children. The "Sendung mit der Maus", a German children's program, showed that this theme does not necessarily have to be taboo for children. But even long before this Hans Christian Andersen wrote his fairy tale about the "mother" who describes her struggle for her dead baby in a very sensitive and succinct way.
The story is a philosophy on death as part of human life. It makes us realise that human energy and will can achieve a lot but have to go hand in hand with the laws of nature or God's will. It consoles us with the idea that our fate follows a greater cause. This simple but very meaningful philosophy can also be understood by children and the performance aims to portray death, which seems so far away to children, not as something to fear but rather as becoming one with nature.
Performance
3 musicians, 1 actor and one dancer create images of mythical proportions. Movement, dance, music and language create a fairytale world in which the elements of nature, death and the mother struggle against each other.
The Fourth Commandment