SCHWEIGT STILLE / SOBER UP!
When Europe ’sobered up’ in the 18th century, by changing its drinking habits from alcohol to coffee, the age of enlightenment also began. Bach’s so-called “Coffee Cantata”, premiered at a Leipzig coffee house, narrates young Lieschen’s story of coffee addiction in a rather amusing way, as the expression of an emerging bourgeois culture. In Schweigt Stille / Sober Up!, Argentinian composer and theatre maker Santiago Blaum juxtaposes this canonical work of European highbrow art with the concrete political and economic conditions of coffee production. He disrupts the harmonies of the European classics with Latin American rhythms, thus diverting the focus from a “music for the mind” towards its physicalness, onto the material quality of coffee and the human energy invested in it.
Staging, Music, and Concept: Santiago Blaum, Fernanda Farah, Zaki Hagins, Eva Löbau. Cello: Eurico Ferreira Mathias. Stage: Jan Brokof. Lighting Design and Video: Catalina Fernández. Costumes: Arturo Lugo. Dramaturgy: Tamara Saphir. Dramaturgical Counsel: José Fernando Peixoto de Azevedo. Outside Eye: Tatiana Saphir. Video Assistance: Benjamin Krieg. Assistance: Sigourney Pilz. Production: Jill Emerson, Till Rothmund.