Die Schauspielregisseurin Alize Zandwijk wird mit zum ersten Mal Musiktheater inszenieren - Deutsche Oper Berlin
Acting director Alize Zandwijk will direct musical theatre for the first time
Songs of Expulsion and Never Returning, fro, 21 May 2022
As an audience member, I sometimes notice in opera that the music gets a lot of attention and the content takes second place. In my own directing work, I want to create a good balance between text and music. The libretto by the Ukrainian author Serhij Zhadan is incredibly poignant. Zhadan deals with refugee stories, tells of being lost and the feeling of life in eastern Ukraine. The music by Bernhard Gander, a mix of new music and heavy metal, is equally powerful - so text and music are equally powerful in this piece. My task is to look for the freedoms in between, to find a common language, to breathe poetry and lightness into the evening despite this power. As a director, I always work with musicians in plays and think of the productions very much in terms of rhythm and music - this will be even more intense with this production, because there are almost exclusively singers on stage. I approach the music by listening to it all the time. By now I know it by heart. From listening, I come to feel and know how the piece has to be staged.
