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Photo: Therese Giehse Büste im Schauspielhaus-Foyer von Kate Isobel Scott. Foto: Gina Bolle
A listening walk with and about Therese Giehse
“So these pictures will be nothing more than meagre, temporary signs of our remembrance. For those who watched her. For those who met her. For those who were allowed to work with her. For those whose lives she changed by example, demand and determination.” - Hans-Reinhard Müller
Therese Giehse, the extraordinary, the stubborn, the single, the quick-witted, the inquisitive, the native of Munich, the Jew, the mother, the lesbian, the old maid, the anti-fascist, the teacher, the apprentice, the spirit of the house, the center of the Kammerspiele. Therese Giehse is associated with a good piece of West German theater history - and at least as great a piece of imagined femininity. As an actress, she spent her entire life on the theater stage. Anyone who remembers her, who met her, worked with her, experienced her on stage, describes her as a role model. She herself never wanted to be stylized as one. She would probably have personally ensured that any pedestal erected in her image would remain empty. How can we commemorate without inscribing?
Five actors try to meet a colleague who died fifty years ago. Two Flinta characters rummage through archives and find Therese Giehse’s afterlife in photographs, recordings, newspaper articles, notebooks, boxes and suitcases. A narrator tells the story. How many lives does a person live? What stories does Giehse’s afterlife tell today? What breaks and gaps does it reveal? Using artistic audio description, director Anne Sophie Kapsner weaves materials from Therese Giehse’s estate into an audio piece that does not claim to be complete and does not aim to be a monumental history. The result is a playful speculation that circles around stations of Giehse’s life as an audio walk.
We would like to thank Walter Hess, Traute Hoess, Lisa Jay Jescke, Marietta Piekenbrock and Janne and Klaus Weinzierl for discussions and support in the course of our research.
Launch
Followed by an artist talk in the Habibi Kiosk