MEDIATHEK

„Josefine“ is an experimental music theatre project dealing with the tops of community in the digital era. The short story by Franz Kafka „Josefine, the Singer“ was used as a reference point for both text and composition.

In times of the global village everybody seems to be connected: you discover people in social networks, who you have never met – but you know where they grew up and how many friends you have in common. It takes only a minute to join mass movements in the word wide web, such as signing a petition against factory farming or an evil state or even more.

Who is that mass of people? How does the masses of the internet look like?

How does a choir – a polymorphic crowd or an inactive mass – sound like in these times?

Where would a star – the one you look up to, while you hate him at the same time – like Josephine the singer (as Kafkas main figure in the novel) would be found today? Is there only one or are there many in the boundless space of the www? And how does one set himself apart from the other, the subject from the community, all in the disembodied expanse of the digital world?

On stage a mixed choir of 50 people forms a counterweight to the bodiless character of the internet. The classical figure of the choir appears, but yet is heard very differently, behaves differently. The choir is moving, it is fragile and frail, all of a sudden becomes a mob, turns into a swarm – it’s the polymorphic crowd: the structures of the internet become visible through the bodies, while they speak, whistle and sing.

But do they sing at all? If you take a close look on Kafkas prose, the description of the voice of Josefine are disparat: It is at the same time a singing and not a singing, a whistling and not a whistling. In the end, you can not judge, whether Josefine can whistle or cheep better than any of the other mice of the Mouse Folk. This chant, that is expressed by the choir on stage, is combined with body-movements and different formations of the choir. Therefore, the music theatre Josefine understands vocals, composition, body, video and stage as equal means of the theatre production.

The choir is interrupted from time to time by raw orchestral sounds. These sounds go together with movements of the stage and rise images of masses in the 20th century. In Josefine movebal pieces of the composition were initiator for scenic occasions and actions, that were redefined again and again: Josefine sounds different on every performance.