MEDIATHEK

Imagine that the hall, the whole space of the hall, is the inside of a head/heart/body. The audience is immersed in the inner workings of a person who is in a difficult or hopeless situation. Infinite now is an experience, a state: in the midst of a morass. What is going on, how long, when will it end – all is unclear. It is an existential state of nakedness where the ordinary sense of control and reason is stripped away.

The piece uses texts from two sources: the short story "Homecoming" by the celebrated Chinese writer Can Xue, and the play "Front" (Luk Perceval). Both texts enact a suspension. In Front, soldiers are in the trenches, locked in fighting which does not end: they move some kilometers forward only
 to return back to their former position in a deadly cycle. In Homecoming, a woman thinks to pass through a house and continue her journey but then she realizes that it is impossible to leave the house which is above an abyss where a quiet old man serves as an illusionary guide.

The slow merging of two seemingly unconnected worlds suggests that in order to survive, one must find the will to continue and find hope in the simplest element of existence, the breathing. In this sense, the opera is about more than ‘Homecoming’ or the First World War. It is about our existence
 here and now. How we survive, how we are destined to survive and how even the smallest element of vitality suggests survival and with it perhaps hope.