OUROBOROS – He who wakes up has something to say

A production of fringe ensemble/Türkei GbR, Bonn and Şermola Performans, Istanbul.

director, performance Frank Heuel
Stage Eduardo Serú
Costumes, Video Annika Ley
Dramaturgy Claudia Grönemeyer
Assistance Jennifer Merten
Management Svenja Pauka

World premiere
12. March 2020, Theater im Balsaal, Bonn

Home Edition live stream
23. March 2020 – Premiere

Revival
18. September 2020, Theater im Ballsaal, Bonn

We are back – and starting exactly where we left off in March of this year. Right after the premiere of the piece “Ouroboros” was over, lockdown. Now we’re just going ahead with the follow-up performances that were planned at the time. As if nothing had happened and yet everything is completely different. Or? The character in Mirza Metin’s text asks himself the same question. The protagonist of the piece tells us a story between dream and reality. He reports on a journey to a foreign country where many things are or seem to be quite different. Chasers and doubles appear and disappear. Hotel addresses lead nowhere. Authorities behave strangely. The solid ground beneath your feet is disappearing. Skillfully, author Mirza Metin plays with how the levels of the unconscious and the conscious influence each other, resulting in a maelstrom of fears, actions, and opinions. What is real, what counts, what is valid?

Mirza Metin has been living in the Rhineland for two and a half years and works, among other things, as a writer for the fringe ensemble. The last piece he wrote for us is a monologue. The title, OUROBOROS, refers to an ancient Egyptian symbol of ambivalent fascination. The ouroboros is a snake that bites its own tail. As a circle symbol, a classic symbol for recurring, natural cycles, but also for death and rebirth, self-sufficiency and self-destruction; a closed system that is self-sufficient – and from which there is no escape.

Mirza Metin plays with these associations in OUROBOROS: The protagonist is a composer, the camera is directed at him and he reports a confused dream while rhinoceros slumbers in the bed next to him. The boundaries between dream and reality quickly become blurred: on a private trip to an undefined foreign country, the protagonist gets more and more into trouble, meets people who resemble him in an absurd way and seem to pursue him at the same time, seeks safety with authorities who distrust him, checks into hotels that don’t exist, and loses more and more the safe ground under his feet. Ignorance and fears act as accelerants and reflections in a story where all certainties are fading and those triggers only seem to potentiate. Metin skillfully plays with how the levels of the unconscious and the conscious influence each other and lead into a maelstrom of fears, actions and opinions. Rhinoceros has long since become Ali, and whether the camera is still running or not, the dream narrative ends there or not, contact with reality in the present has been established.

Trailer OUROBOROS by: Sirpa Wilner

Rehearsal and premiere photos