MELANIE JAME WOLF Finite Jest

In the organizer's words:

FINITE JEST is the anatomy of a joke. The joke goes like this: Everyone dies. The question is: can we laugh about it together in a theater? In her new solo performance, Melanie Jame Wolf shows that we have to. The choreographer, performer and artist draws on her own encounters with death and (almost) dying, her experiences with breast cancer, the death of friends, the grief scrolling on her cell phone screen and raising a five-year-old child who asks: "What happens when we die?" In stand-up, they say: If a joke doesn't work, comedians "die" on stage; stand-up - drop dead. FINITE JEST tests that line where the joke dies, and fundamentally shows how we can use humor to make the fact of death and the inevitable grief occasionally bearable. Melanie Jame Wolf, who has realized solo exhibitions as a visual artist and performances with Ania Nowak, among others, in addition to theater works, draws on archetypal images. She uses Shakespeare, the figure of the fool and stand-up comedy to question conventions, how we mourn, how we think about dying and how a moral is created around these themes. She manages the feat of creating a very funny, yet serious and above all deeply moving work about death and life.

CONCEPT, TEXT, STAGE DESIGN, SOUND, COSTUME DESIGN, PERFORMANCE Melanie Jame Wolf OUTSIDE EYE Agnė Auželytė DRAMATURGY Louise Trueheart

PRODUCTION Melanie Jame Wolf / Savage Amusement IN COPRODUCTION WITH Sophiensæle. WITH THE FRIENDLY SUPPORT of Schwankhalle Bremen and in co-production in residence at O Espaço do Tempo and the Ilse and Dr. Horst Rusch Foundation.

Price information:

9-22 Euro (50 % discount with festival ticket)