ARCHIVES 2010 / Schutz vor der Zukunft

There is a hospital in Vienna, the Otto Wagner hospital, with beautiful marble and gold architecture, part of which was transformed into a theatre. Discovering it in 2005, just when he was looking for a venue to create a new show, Christoph Marthaler became interested in its history and discovered the hidden and far from brilliant face of this building that was, between 1940 and 1945, and perhaps a little while longer, an experimentation and extermination centre for children and adults who had psychic illnesses. Ever inspired by the places and atmospheres of the cities in which he works with his artistic partners, he wanted, with Schutz vor der Zukunft, to draw attention, not only to the euthanasia practices in force during the Nazi period, but also to all the attempts at selection that tried to create an almost ideal world rid of its "stains" and its "abnormal people". To ring this alarm bell in their inimitable manner, Christoph Marthaler and his dramaturg Stefanie Carp composed a score-text comprised of political and theoretical writings, biographies of past and present patients, as well as a musical score bringing together Schubert, Mahler, Schumann and Shostakovich, a musician who spent most of his life composing under the threat of deportation to the gulag. A memory of the past and a vision of the future clash, blending to the rhythm of those that speak out, the vocal performances of the actors-singers' speeches, choreographies sketched by the silhouettes so well drawn by Marthaler's characters, whimsical beings, impoverished and often awkward in whom we recognise ourselves. The universe that they create, made up of accele?rations and slowdowns, permits us to take the time to open our eyes and ears to the diffuse threats that surround them, that surround us, to attempt, if possible to "protect yourself from the future". JFP