LULU. To all our lovers.

"Look at me."
"What d'you want?"
"Your eyes... Look in my eyes."
"I see myself in them. ... I must get changed."
(Frank Wedekind)

Where the affirmation of oneself as a meaningful part of a community is lacking or insufficient for self-actualization plans, it must be done in a different way...

Lulu's gone. No one's seen her for a while. Geschwitz invites for dinner at her new apartment. An older building somewhere in Giessen. The guests are former, current and potential lovers of Lulu. A warm summer evening. A successful party: dancing, laughing, crying, bribing, lying and threatening. They fight for the few remaining glances and for their own place in a world in which everyone wants to be desired only as themselves and for their personal attributes. It becomes - in the end - erotic.

You weren't invited to the party, but none of this makes sense without you. So you're welcome to watch if you want to.

Previous performances: 23 & 24.07. and 28 to 31.07.2011, 19:30 hrs and additional performances 28 to 30.07., 24:00 hrs
Venue: Ludwigstr. 28 in Gießen
Admission: 7 € / 4 € reduced

With: Arne Köhler, Christoph Bovermann, Fabian Passarelli, Falk Rößler, Maria-Isabel Hagen & Nick-Julian Lehmann

Idea: Eleonora Herder

Direction: Eleonora Herder & Falk Rößler
Dramatugry: Michaela Stolte
Stage design: Sabine Born
Music & sound design: Falk Rößler & Arne Köhler
Production: Isabelle Zinsmaier
Technical assistance: Jost von Harleßem

Supported by:
Hessische Theaterakademie
AStA der JLU Gießen
hessische Film- und Medienakademie
Zentrum für Medien und Interaktivität Gießen
Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft Gießen
Our supporters on www.startnext.de/lulu

Imagine the following situation: it is later in the evening. You are sitting at a window. In an apartment across the street, you can see three rooms through the window: the bedroom, the dining room, the bathroom. In the flat in front of the window, there is a dinner, guests are invited, there is good food and lots of intrigue. Down the street, every now and then, there are some of the guests.
Some of them may even enter your house and suddenly talk to each other in the room next to you. You watch all this from your apartment. We, the people from the house across the street, follow the story. You watch and listen to us. And suddenly you realize: Not only you are watching. Suddenly we turn towards you, we address you directly, we stage ourselves just for you. Suddenly you are no longer a pervert, we are. And we abuse you in the worst possible way - because we need your glances.
And then, before you realize it, our erotic game turns once again. You become aware of your power. You keep us in suspense. You enjoy our impatience. You make us gasp...

The inspiration for our work is Frank Wedekind's double drama "Lulu", consisting of the two parts "Earth Spirit" and "Pandora's Box".
We deal freely with this material, in which we are especially interested in the figure of Lulu with her radical self-dramatization as well as the efforts of the other characters to capture this being and to get hold of it.
We are interested in understanding the figure of Lulu as a postmodern state; as a state of a society that largely abandons itself as a community. Instead, this society produces individuals who constantly present and market themselves as desirable and intimate übermen.
Lulu is postmodern because she knows that she is being observed and at the same time knows that this gaze defines her. Lulu is not (as it has been repeatedly claimed) a naive, 'natural' being who acts out the supposedly original femininity. Lulu is a master of "second-order observation" because she observes how others observe her and aligns her behavior accordingly.

Where self-affirmation as a meaningful part of a community is lacking or insufficient for self-actualization plans, this self-affirmation must be done in other ways. But on what should it be based, if not on the value that is placed on the person as such and apart from any community? It is a matter of gaining one's place in the world by being desired only as oneself and for one's own attributes. It is - after all - about eroticism. Eroticism, enactment and the production of desire as new paradigms of everyday life, because only as a permanently erotic being one can find a place in a world full of individualists. Only if I am desirable, I will be noticed and if necessary fulfill myself.
Lulu appears to us as perhaps one of the first famous theatrical figures to perform this postmodern constellation.
The fact that Lulu may be less a fear or hope inspiring female archetype, but rather embodies a new, postmodern way of behaving, is a rarely found interpretation of this figure. But this is precisely where our interest in Wedekind's double drama comes in.

Regie: Eleonora Herder und Falk Rößler
Performer & Musiker: Maria-Isabel Hagen, Arne Köhler, Christoph Bovermann, Nick-Julian Lehmann, Fabian Passarelli, Falk Rößler
Dramaturgie: Michaela Stolte
Stage design: Sabine Born

“Das Stück hat nicht nur eine Besonderheit aufzuweisen, sondern ist gespickt mit einer Vielzahl von Ideen, Kreativität und technischem Einfühlungsvermögen für die erfolgreiche Umsetzung der aufwendigen Produktion. Ein Phänomen ist sicherlich der Ort des Schauspiels. Denn die Besucher befinden sich nicht im gleichen Raum mit den Akteuren. Sie sind noch nicht einmal im selben Haus.”

(„Theater- Thriller mit ungewöhnlicher Spielstätte“, Gießner Allgemein Zeitung, ,25.07.2011)

“Unter der Regie von Eleonora Herder und Falk Rößler ist ein Drama mit abwesender Protagonistin entstanden. Die Figur der Lulu verstehen sie als postmodernen Zustand einer Gesellschaft, die sich als Gemeinschaft aufgegeben hat. Es geht vielmehr darum, sich so zu inszenieren, dass die Blicke und Beurteilungen der anderen die eigene Persönlichkeit ausmachen. Der Blick des anderen definiert uns, die ständige Beobachtung stellt die Persönlichkeit erst her.”

(Fiona Sara Schmidt: „Voyeurismus als Theaterkonzept“, Gießner Zeitung, 25.07.2011)