PLATONIA
According to safety regulations, 3.6 people are allowed to live on one square meter of the earth’s surface. 10 billion people are already forecast by the year 2100. It will be a tight squeeze on this world.
The desire for life will be the undoing of both the world and mankind, and conception will become its own snare. Out of a great love for life, we take up a counter-design and passionately devote ourselves to the purely organic elimination of material. PLATONIA understands the world order as a balancing act between ecosystem and human impact.
As a mouthpiece for the planet, PLATONIA tells how proximity is practiced sparingly and how coexistence is shaped sustainably – for diversity in nature, for climate protection and self-regulated food chains. In this way we defy the inadequate reality and carry the idea of an ideal world into the theatre.
Following the thoughts of a woman in her thirties – between the desire to have children and the urgent resolution not to create even more footprints – the question arises whether her personal decision could also be a solution for the whole planet. Out of this world of thought unfolds the grotesque landscape of a civilization on demand, leading us into a future of radical overpopulation and the Platonic ideal of living and loving without residue.
PLATONIA sets out on the trail of this romantic idea and its absurd and fantastic manifestations – and celebrates life.
Premiere: June 6th 2018 // Theater Rampe, Stuttgart
Duration: ca. 60 minutes
Contributors
Performance und creation: Steven Chotard, Ariel Cohen, Isabelle Gatterburg, Martin Mauriès
Musician: Heiko Giering
Artistic director: Nicki Liszta
Executive director and artistic assistant: Isabelle Gatterburg
Music director and composition: Heiko Giering
Stage design: Nina Malotta, Samuel Hof
Costume design: Nina Malotta, Rebecca Moltenbrey
Dramaturgy: Tobias Tönjes
Video: Christopher Bühler
Press
Press:
»The black-humorous prelude to ›Platonia‹ the new piece by choreographer Nicki Liszta for backsteinhaus produktion, in the foyer of the Rampe Theater hit home. Like what followed on stage: While the audience sat down, the suicide artist threw herself in backbends and twists, as if it were about life and death. It did, about humanity and the earth. How the overpopulation lets the the planet gasping for air, was shown on two screens. … It is strong stuff – and a highly explosive and indispensable for the discussion, which is grandiose and consistently without moral finger pointing brought on stage by the backsteinhaus artists. That’s exactly why it gets under your skin.« Petra Mostbacher-Dix, Stuttgarter Zeitung, 8. June 2018
»The piece ›Platonia‹ by the Stuttgart choreographer Nicki Liszta at Theater Rampe is negotiating with sober cynicism, dark and frightening the colossal overpopulation and waste of resources . … In addition to unusually comforting hugs, the rather brutal dance Nicki Lisztas shows the pure physical attack against the lunacy of existence. The eerily swirling sounds of dripping water, which Heiko Giering is creating on his computer, rise to threatening rhythms through piano music and paradisiacal harmonies.« Angela Reinhardt, Eßlinger Zeitung, 15. June 2018
»… ›backsteinhaus produktion‹ from Stuttgart … is launching a new production in Theater Rampe: ›Platonia‹, ›Physical theater‹ at its best. Nicki Liszta, the leader of the group founded in 2008, has developed a choreography on the subject of the overpopulation of the earth, which works with the elements of water and light. … Exciting how Nicki Liszta perseveres this theme and drives her four-strong dance ensemble into ever new rebounds. Acrobatic and with great speed, Steven Chotard and Martin Mauriès move through the room with a lot of ground contact and a lot of physical effort: … expressing a power that emanates optimism. … Finally, a utopian space develops. … A strong image in the coproducing Theater Rampe.« Manfred Jahnke, Deutsche Bühne, 7. June 2018
Partner
Realised in cooperation with the Theater Rampe in the line of the three-year collaboration ›Rampe tanzt!‹. Funded through conceptions-subsidies of the Landesverband Freie Tanz- und Theaterschaffende Baden-Württemberg e.V. aus Mitteln des Ministeriums für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst des Landes Baden-Württemberg and the City of Stuttgart and the Fonds Darstellende Künste.
