A solo piece with Hannelore Elsner

»Is a journey to those hidden spots embowelled within each of us – regardless whether man or woman. It is the history of the man and the woman. Back to the times of Adam and Eve. It pertains to the man who hides himself behind his language, his logic, his secure ideas. And it concerns the woman who wants chaos and lack of restraint. The caprice. The freedom. The bluntness. It pertains to much more than the customary game between man and woman. It pertains to real existence and not to making love« (Hannelore Elsner, in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 03.04.1996).

Hannelore Elsner is one of Germany’s greatest character actresses. She owes her celebrity mainly to her countless movie and television roles and after 14 years she now returns to the theatre as an actress. Her meeting with Jan Fabre, who is one of the most eminent directors of Europe’s avant-garde theatre, led to a theatrical highlight of this year.

A woman seems to be talking to herself, however that monologue is at the same time some sort of internal dialogue in which she expresses both sides, her own as well as that of the man with whom she spent time together. At the same time the »dead-normal woman« oscillates between an account of concrete memories and a conjuration of magic powers, a game of obscure rituals and witchcraft as well as an astonishing transsexual final fantasy.

Hannelore Elsner performed since 1966 in the Münchner Kammerspiele; for example, as Ala in Sławomir Mrożek’s »Tango«. She had plenty of other offers, including those from famous directors. But she did not care any more for »standard theatre« and so she performed in countless important television plays and ARD series, for example in »Stahlnetz« (»Steel net«), »Dem Täter auf der Spur« (»Tracing the culprit«) and »Irgendwie und Sowieso« (»Somehow and anyway«). Over 80 movie and television roles followed, directed amongst others by Wolfgang Staudte, Istvan Szábo and Ilse Biberti. In 1991 she was awarded the »Silberne Nymphe« (»Silver Nymph«) for her role in »Elsa« as the best actress during the 32nd International Television Festival in Monte Carlo.

Hannelore Elsner now branches out from the elegant simplicity of her »Kommissarin« (»Police Inspector«), the heroine of her latest and well-known television series, to the completely different-styled sorcerer’s coat of Jan Fabre. This theatre magician was born 1958 in Antwerp, started to draw at an early age, wrote plays and then started to direct in 1980. Beside his great ballet and theatre productions, he also created three solo plays for his »Muse« Els Deceukelier, amongst them was in 1994 »Een doodnormale vrouw«. This monologue is the first of his productions which Fabre directed in the German language.