26 February 2016, Cristiana Visan, Buenos Aires Herald
Interview (en)

‘Theatre musn’t underestimate the audience’

Composer Heiner Goebbels talks about the local premiere of Stifter’s Dinge: a no-man-show

For the first time in its history, the Colón Theatre is offering a work with no performers. In six shows this week, Stifter’s Dinge (Stifter’s Things) invites 160 viewers per performance to wonder and ponder an almost otherworldly soundscape. Premiered in 2007, this unique work puts the audience onstage with an assemblage of five pianos, pools of water, wires and projections, and recorded voices, in a theatre setting, for a show that goes beyond kinetic art and musical installation to offer the viewers a chance at a singular experience.... Behind the 70-minute work is German composer and director Heiner Goebbels, one of the world’s most interesting champions of contemporary and experimental art forms. Goebbels drew inspiration from the writings of 19th-century Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter and used his name for the title of a work that features a diversity of sources, from early 20th century recordings of Papua New Guinea chants to Greek folk songs, the voice of William Burroughs, and extracts from interviews with Claude Lévi-Strauss and Malcolm X. In an interview with the Herald, Goebbels spoke softly with natural poise, smoothly shifting from a serious tone to a quick laughter.

on: Stifters Dinge (Music Theatre)