Opening speech by Enis Maci, followed by "The Silk Drum" A modern Nō-play after Yukio Mishima
We are very pleased that Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and North Rhine-Westphalia's Minister President Armin Laschet will be speaking at the opening ceremony on 2 May. The opening will take place digitally. (in German)
Speech by Enis Maci(in German)Enis Maci, born in 1993 in Gelsenkirchen, is considered one of the most interesting literary voices of her generation. She studied "Literary Writing" at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig and Cultural Sociology at the London School of Economics, is the author of the highly acclaimed essay collection "Eiscafé Europa" and six acclaimed plays. Most recently, she was awarded the "Text & Language" literature prize of the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft and the Ruhr Literature Prize. In 2021 she will be a scholarship holder at the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul and the Villa Aurora in L. A. Her texts are movements of thought, razor-sharp, wonderfully meandering, incredibly entertaining and terrifying at the same time. Effortlessly, she links all the textual and articulation modes of our time. Personal, political, social, radical. Now Enis Maci is coming back to her home, the Ruhr region, where she grew up and socialised, to give this year's Ruhrfestspiele keynote speech.
afterwards:The Silk DrumA Modern NohWritten by Jean-Claude Carrière, inspired by Yukio MishimaDirected and choreographed by Kaori Ito & Yoshi OidaCo-produced with the Festival d'Avignon and Théâtre de la Ville, Paris
(in French with German surtitles)
German premiere
In his latest stage production, the 87-year old acting legend Yoshi Oida teams up with dancer Kaori Ito. Oida, who spent many years working with Peter Brooks, presents his theatrical legacy in “The Silk Drum.” Inspired by the Noh play “Aya no Tsuzumi” and its adaptation by Yukio Mishima, Jean-Claude Carrière’s play tells the story of an old man who is cleaning the stage of a theatre when he falls in love with a dancer who is rehearsing her part on stage. This younger woman seems inaccessible to him. The young woman holds a Japanese drum out to him and tells him that if he can get a sound out of it, she will be his. She is preparing to rehearse a traditional Japanese dance, the dance of madness, to the sound of the drum. But the old man tries to get a sound out of the drum without success. The surface of the drum is made from silk and it makes no noise. This results in a terrible outcome for the desperate old man. He reappears covered in blood and comes back to haunt the young woman like a living ghost.“The Silk Drum” subtly interweaves dialogue, dance, and percussion to create a dreamlike atmosphere. Its ephemeral beauty is seemingly simple, yet it contains hidden depths of raw emotion. It creates a caleidoscopic vision of theater and dance, terror and compassion, elegance and brutality that casts an inescapable spell on its audiences.