German premier

Every man in the audience is a Hansel, every woman a Gretel. All alone, you go through the »forest« and various spaces – and miraculously find your way, guided by the children’s voices of Hansel and Gretel via individual headphones. Each station opens up a sensuous new world and represents part of the passage between waking and dreaming.

The fairy tale of »Hansel and Gretel« by the Brothers Grimm was published in 1812 and refers to educational methods, loneliness and the punishment of evil. It effortlessly transcends space and time between childhood and adulthood. The installation ».h.g.« is a highly original version, which brings together a sophisticated audio engineering with the simplicity of the presence of »almost nothing« in terms of scenery. Your own fantasy alone makes the shape of the fairy tale appear and with it your own memories and hopes. The fact that this installation ultimately makes a departure from innocence gives it an extra dimension.

Cristina Galbiati was born in Monza near Milan in 1973 and Ilija Luginbühl in Schaffhausen near Zurich in 1977. Both studied at the Kalamandalam School in Kerala, India. Together they founded the Trickster Teatro in Novazzano/Switzerland near Lugano in 1999 and have created scenic productions, such as »Rapsodia per giganti« (»Rapsody for giants«, 2004) and »Come una preghiera« (»Like a prayer«, 2008) that cannot be attributed to any common genre. The Trickster Teatro gave guest performances in Italy, France, The Netherlands and Denmark as well as in India, Taiwan, Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador. Now it can be experienced in Germany for the first time.

»In ›.h.g.‹, the story of the two children of a poor woodcutter and his wife is transformed from a simple narrative into an installation, in which theatre and visual art are combined … Sounds, words and even a little music carry the audience on a journey of sounds into an original fairy tale world« (Ute Joest, Tessiner Zeitung, Locarno, 03.04.2009).