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Heiner Goebbels - I Went To The House But Did Not Enter and Mixing Form and Content

Heiner Goebbels’ latest work may be in the drama programme, but the scope of this maverick composer and theatre maker is far more expansive. In 2004, ‘Eraritijaritjaka’ took audiences on a drive-by live film feed inspired by Elias Canetti, and in 2001 ‘Hashirigaki’ melded Gertrude Stein with The Beach Boys. Now, this ‘staged concert in three parts,’ produced by Theatre Vidy-Lausanne and featuring The Hilliard Ensemble, looks to T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock’, Maurice Blanchot’s ‘The Madness Of The Day’ and Samuel Beckett’s ‘Worstward Ho’.

Goebbels’ collage-based approach dates back to early theatre-works based on texts by his mentor, Heiner Muller, the East German playwright best known for his epic ‘Hamlet/Machine.’ Prior to this, Goebbels played works by Bertolt Brecht collaborator Hans Eisler, and formed avant-rock band Cassiber with saxophonist Alfred Barth, ex Henry Cow drummer Chris Cutler and Christoph Anders. A couple of decades on, and the appearance of Goebbels’ 2007 piece, ‘’Stifter’s Dinge – ‘music without musicians’ featuring recorded texts by William Burroughs, Claude Levi-Strauss and Austrian poet Adalbat Stifter in London and Amsterdam, is a tantalising teaser for an audacious weaving of 20th century material to make something utterly of the 21st.

I Went To The House But Did Not Enter, EIF, Royal Lyceum Theatre, August 28-30

The List, August 2008

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