“Ecological questions, which are dangerously into the background in view of the increasingly polemized world situation, run like a thread through the program of this edition,” write the spectacle responsible in a statement. And so it is no coincidence that on the (today) Thursday, when the UN Conference ends in plastic waste in Geneva, the theater festival opened on the Landiwiese in Zurich with productions in which two SUVs on Lake Zurich sing to perform, scareching of times when there were still birds to scare away.
Status symbol SUV and climate crisis
Of all things, two SUVs, which are particularly important for the climate crisis and a privileged handling of it, swim in the lake in front of the Saffainsel. A woman wadet with shopping bags of luxury brands in the lake to one of the cars. When the loud music started during the dress rehearsal before the official festival start, this aroused the attention of the bathers present, which began to photograph with the cell phone. Then there were also 30 divers around. And suddenly it was no longer clear what was actually part of performance and what was simply the result. The performance became an intervention.
Behind the performance is a team around the Bern filmmaker, theater and performance artist Piet Baumgartner (“Bagger Drama”). Well, in Zurich, unlike in his highly acclaimed feature film debut, he does not dance an excavator, but he works with the status symbol SUV.
However, the motivation may be similar both times. The trained machine artist Baumgartner is fascinated by technology. In the village in the Bernese Seeland, where he comes from, “is technology combined with belief in progress. Sometimes it has almost religious features. » People said “that with and thanks to her can be mastered and directed, even the consequences of climate change,” he said once about the news agency Keystone-Sda. Baumgartner’s performance “4×4” takes half an hour and can be experienced on the three weekends of the Spectacle Theater.
Bizarre world against the crisis
Thematically, those responsible for the festival await the French director Philippe Quesne. In his piece “Farm Fatale”, scarecrows tell of species death. The piece from a bizarre world was designed for the Munich chamber games in 2019. Since then, “the environmental crisis has been intensified: air quality, agriculture, food … and all of this is related to the current geopolitical conflicts and unleashed capitalism,” Quesne can be quoted in the magazine on theater spectacle.ch. “Farm Fatale” can be seen on the lake stage from August 14th to 16th.
In addition to environmental issues, this year’s theater spectacle raises questions about the cooperation, for example in the musical dance piece “Umuko” by the focus artist Dorothée Munyaneza from Rwanda. In total, more than 200 artists and 33 productions from all over the world are on the program. The Zurich theater spectacle lasts from August 14th to 31st.
theaterspektakel.ch
date: 2025-08-14 07:37:00