The sing-song of a characteristically male voice interrupts the shuffle of a young woman’s fornlorn gait. The woman is Nora, the heroine of Djuna Barnes novel »Nightwood« (first published in 1937). Desperate love to another woman holds the dancer in its gip. Dr. O’Connor spirals frenziedly on the battens which arc above a metal chest and in his dance exposes his one desire: to be a woman. Two prisoners meet on the stage; incarcerated in their passions, in the superheated swelter of the night, in the impossibility of their existence.

Djuna Barnes’ flowery language weaves into a fascinating web of sensuality, desperation and enigmatic intellect. »Warden, what speaks the night«, the theme of the American cult novel’s central chapter, runs straight through the text of this »danced elocutionary opera«. »Quollen«, the past tense of »quellen«, of an overstuffed drawer spilling its contents, provides the puzzling title for this theatrical evening.

Ute Stammberger, producer and director of the Comedia Opera Instabile, has in the set and costume designer Rainer Wiesemes, in her choreorapher Dieter Baumann and in the two performers, four congenial partners. Rainer Wiesemes directs occasionally, Dieter Baumann is well-known as the choreographer and protagonist of the Berlin-based dance company Rubato and Matthias Hirth spreads the two building blocks of language and body movements far apart and so develops the statements of compatibility and autonomy. A risky cross-over between the two media succeeds as a smashing artistic event and triumphs as a new dimension of theatrical expression.