The topos of the Wood as a focus for German Romantic sensibility has undergone considerable shifts over the last 200 years. Be it as an epitome of narrow-mindedness, militaristic uniformity and romantic withdrawal from society, as a touchstone to eco-spirituality or as a seismic gauge of climate change, the wood has always served and continues to serve as a projection surface for socio-political phenomena.

Director Anna-Sophie Mahler and her team have used interviews with experts and scientists as the basis for their two-part evening of musical theatre, an event that not only invites the audience to learn and experience but will also be engineering a shift in public perspective. In the process the austere Tischlerei will morph into an imaginary wood, Romantic choral music and sylvan song material will be delivered in a campsite ambience and the audience will gain insights into fungal structures and the communications systems of trees. The evening will culminate in a condensed presentation of Morton Feldman‘s »Triadic Memories« – an extraordinary piece for solo piano that was written in 1981, late in his career, and is a gem of clarity, openness and minimalism.

Anna-Sophie Mahler is at home with opera and theatre in equal measure. She works regularly as part of a team putting together events that are based on research findings and cause familiar stage material to rub up against the biographies of »real people«.