Angela (a strange loop)
For Angela (a strange loop), director Susanne Kennedy and multimedia artist Markus Selg consider the life of a woman, in order to portray individual life as a journey and to ask what it means to be human today.
Festival Holland Festival
Run time 90 minutes, no intermission
Genre Theatre
Language English
Surtitles Dutch
Angela (a strange loop)
‘What makes Angela, Angela?’ German director Susanne Kennedy and multimedia artist Markus Selg want to know. To find out, they seize on Angela’s existence as dramatic material, following her from birth to death and beyond. Their journey takes her through everyday situations: illness and recovery, waking and sleeping, being born and giving birth, aging and death. The hypothesis is that Angela is made up of millions of experiences and that some of them reflect what others have told her. Angela might ultimately be just a strange loop, an endless sequence.
-|-Susanne Kennedy and Markus Selg explore the new balance of power that exists between bodies, technical objects and machines. With a post-humanist aesthetic and multimedia approach, they put the distortion of the actors resulting from the mask play, lip-synced dialogues and doppelgängers of Germanic folklore to good use. Angela (a strange loop) takes us on a deep dive into the question of identity and consciousness. Angela guides us to one of the fundamental questions of existence: what is the nature of reality and what does ‘I’ represent?
Credits
concept, text and direction Susanne Kennedy
concept and stage design Markus Selg
performance Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández, Kate Strong, Tarren Johnson, Dominic Santia
voices Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Cathal Sheerin, Kate Strong, Rita Kahn Chen, Rubina Schuth, Tarren Johnson, Susanne Kennedy, Ethan Braun Dominic Santia, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández, Marie Schleef, Ruth Rosenfeld
sound design and montage Richard Alexander
soundtrack Richard Alexander, Diamanda La Berge Dramm
live music Diamanda La Berge Dramm
video design Rodrik Biersteker, Markus Selg
costume design Andra Dumitrascu
dramaturgy Helena Eckert
light design Rainer Casper
artistic collaboration + touring direction Friederike Kötter Stage
assistant Lili Süper
artistic costume assistant Anastasia Pilepchuk, Anna Jannicke Direction
intern Tobias Klett
-|-
production ULTRAWORLD PRODUCTIONS
management Something Great Artistic
production management Philip Decker
technical production management Sven Nichterlein
stage construction Stefan Pilger
international distribution Rui Silveira - Something Great
tour manager Niki Fischer - Something Great
co-producers Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Festival d'Automne à Paris & Odéon - Théâtre de l'Europe (Paris), Festival d'Avignon (Avignon), Holland Festival (Amsterdam), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), National Theatre Drama / Prague Crossroads Festival (Prague), Romaeuropa Festival (Rome), Teatro Nacional de São João (Porto) and Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (Berlin)
World premiere May 11th 2023 at Théâtre National Wallonie Bruxelles as part of Kunstenfestivaldesarts
ABOUT HOLLAND FESTIVAL
The Holland Festival is the largest international performing arts festival in the Netherlands and one of the oldest festivals in Europe. Founded in 1947, Holland Festival celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2022.
The festival takes place every June, in and around Amsterdam at various locations, indoors and outdoors, large-scale and intimate, online and offline.
