With DIE FLANEURE / London we continue our examination of selected metropolises of a troubled Europe, which we started last year. The premiere will take place at the beginning of the season after the theater vacations.

Strolling is a bit like surfing the web. The flâneur surfs in the real world. Everything is an object of contemplation for him: the winners, the losers, the beautiful and the ugly. – Gero von Randow

With DIE FLANEURE / London we continue our examination of selected metropolises of a troubled Europe, which we started last year. After Athens, the city that with its current social tensions, its geopolitical position and its historical significance for Europe as the cradle of democracy almost inevitably marked the starting point of the series, now London. From the capital of one of the financially weakest countries to the world capital of money. Greece fears the Grexit, in London the Brexit is a done deal.

Set designer Annika Ley, actress Bettina Marugg, and Andreas Meidinger, who is associated with the fringe ensemble not only as an actor but also works as a sound designer and musician, traveled to London for a week this spring – at the same time, but independently and without contact with each other. They lived in different neighborhoods in outer districts of the city and moved more or less purposefully toward the center within seven days. They sought and found their respective individual strolling mode.
They “read” in streets, faces, facades and brought their impressions, not least those of their flaneur existence, in the form of pictures, notes, sounds and conversations. This time, the flaneurs were accompanied directly from home: Harald Redmer, known to the Bonn audience as an actor in earlier fringe productions, made telephone calls with them several times this week, recorded them and made notes from the perception of distance.

The experiences are guided by chance and the individual gaze, the images and stories are excerpts – and yet they will reflect the urban mood and climate of London and its inhabitants on various levels and mirror, supplement, reweight our view shaped by media coverage. The audience can expect an evening of theater that resembles a journey, leaving the viewer’s gaze oscillating – between flaneur-like and his own perception.

DIE FLANEURE / LONDON is a production of fringe ensemble/Flaneure GbR and phoenix5. Sponsored by: Kunststiftung NRW, City of Münster, City of Bonn, Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Premiere September 27, 2018, theaterimballsaal

Authors, flaneurs Annika Ley, Bettina Marugg, Andreas Meidinger
Companion from a distance Harald Redmer
Director Frank Heuel
Space and costumes Annika Ley