Moby Dick oder der weisse wal

A durational performance directed by
MARICEL ALVAREZ & EMILIO GARCÍA WEHBI

Institut für Theaterwissenschaft Ludwig-Maximilian Universität
Ludwig-Maximilian Universität, Munich, Germany, 2007

 

Presented within a postgraduate seminar for Theater Studies students at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, this performance was meant to go on for 26 hours and 30 minutes. In that time-frame, performers took shifts to read Melville’s complete text, to swing a 40-kilogram meat rack as a metaphorical bait invoking the white whale -here embodied by a female performer with a knife as her sole attire-. They would write or draw impressions in a logbook, review quotes from the Bible and Shakespeare that echo in Moby Dick, they would play the piano and the violin, prepare a sophisticated fish-based dinner, and play classical records from the Romantic period in a double DJ-turntable, scratching, pitching and looping the tracks into the shape of the whale’s song or lament.

Performers: Malte Bartz, Adrian Breul, Julia Friedenberger, Tobias Ginsburg, Sarah Holtkamp, Judith Hummel, Christopher Kloe, Zlatko Krajinovic, Andrea Juliette Mair, Jasmin Menrad, Carolin Millner, Serkan Salihoglu, Tobias Staab / Piano: Carolin Millner / Violin: Sarah Holtkamp / DJ: Zlatko Krajinovic / Text: Herman Melville / Artistic producer: Jorg Von Brincken / Concept, directed by Emilio García Wehbi & Maricel Alvarez