I am forgotten wideness

Robert Walser Project

Premiere 02. October 2011 at the Theater im Pumpenhaus

Robert Walser, born 1878, died on Christmas day 1956. He was a passionate walker and died on his last stroll, alone in the snow. Up until today he belongs to the most enigmatic writers of his time. In rapid succession, the swiss citizen published three novels, before he was admitted into a nursing institution in Wallau on the basis of a psychic crisis. Against his will, he was transfered to the Psychiatry Sanatorium in Appenzell in 1933, where he stayed for 26 years as an anonimous patient. He did not write anymore. 526 leaves of so called mikrogramms, which originated from earlier, pencil written in the smallest, most mysterious way in Sütterlin lettering, where found in his estate. After 19 years of painfull deciphering work, they were wonderously prepared for publication. Accordingly, the Sycorax actors, the specialists of the directing duo Artkamp/Kerklau, resort on a walk through Walser´s head and become figures and personifications of his thoughts, memories and dreams. The play zooms deeply into the infinite microcosms of human sentiments. By way of scenic approaches to the man, vagabound, outsider and patient Robert Walser, a voyage starts through his mysterious life. Some of the topics that drive and plague Walser, his relationship to nature, fleeing from women, his wish to again fit into children´s shoes and his time in the military office are covered and spotlighted in pictures.
What remains in the end is that life just does not have a fixed axle and sometimes requires for some other kind of movement, somewhere between pencil gentle dance and a climb on glaciered mountain peaks.

„I was a dream within a dream, like a thought, put into another one. I was less appearance than desire, I lived only in desire and was only desire. So I started walking. No, not walking, I strolled in empty air.“ (Robert Walser)

Actors: Johannes Bayer, Marleen Böhm, Lawrence DeWinter, Jens Dombrowski, Ewelina Hoffmann, Monika Horn, Jutta Nahamowitz, Hedwig Preiß-Berning, Konrad Schönberger, Simon S., Anja Ziegeldorf

Directors: Paula Artkamp / Manfred Kerklau
Artistic Cooperation: Jennifer Ocampo Monsalve
Stage: Leon Riminih
Costumes Bettina Zumdick
Lighting: Volker Sippel
Assistence: Stefan Laspeyres
Public Relation: Rita Roring
Grafic Design: Verena Blom
Fotos: Ralf Emmerich

A Production of Theater Sycorax in Coproduction with Theater im Pumpenhaus, supported by: Kulturamt der Stadt Münster, Stiftung Siverdes, Kulturstiftung der Sparkasse Münster, Förderkreis Sozialpsychiatrie e.V.