(a kind of) Requiem

31.03.2023 Buzzcut Festival, CCA, Glasgow, U.K.

18.01.2024 United in Grief Festival, Theater Neumarkt, Switzerland

21.09.2024 Sound of C, C-Mine, Genk, Belgium

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

(a kind of) Requiem is a durational performance based on A German Requiem, a large-scale work for choir and orchestra composed by Johannes Brahms between 1865-1868.

Intended as a ‘Menschenwerk’ (a work of humankind) suggests that Brahms wished to offer this solace to all listeners, regardless of their own religious beliefs or backgrounds. According to his account the composition’s objective is to transform sorrow to joy providing comfort for the living who have lost loved ones, things and places.

Picking up on this theme and further developing it Lulu Obermayer will create a solo, where she directs and choreographs 20 year old singer Noa Calluy. Reducing the large-scale work to one voice and body, who replaces the choir and orchestra, the solitary and isolating experience of loss is exhibited. An emotional landscape is created, where the raw labor of mourning is performed and aestheticised to provide a non secular collective mourning experience.

The audience is invited to stay, to witness and to be transformed by this complex musical and emotional toil.

A co-production by Lulu Obermayer with FREISCHWIMMEN, the production platform for performance and theatre, supported by brut Wien, FFT Düsseldorf, Gessnerallee Zürich, HochX Theater and Live Art München, LOFFT - DAS THEATER Leipzig, Schwankhalle Bremen, SOPHIENSÆLE Berlin and Theater Rampe Stuttgart, under the management of SOPHIENSÆLE GmbH. FREISCHWIMMEN is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media through the programme "Promoting Connections" of the Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste e.V. (Federal Association of Independent Performing Arts).