In the summer of this year, news moved the art world: Germany returns the stolen Benin bronzes to Nigeria. The decades-long struggle, a one-off restitution, enormous in scope and importance – an important, explosive topic. Only: The thematic complex of colonial looted art and restitution does not necessarily push onto the stage. Little action and actors, much debate, very delicate.
Director Jan-Christoph Gockel and choreographer Serge Aimé Coulibaly tried anyway. The Munich Kammerspiele and the cultural institution “La Fabrik” in Togolese Lomé teamed up and developed “Les statues rêvent aussi. Vision of a Return”, which has now premiered. Half of the play takes place in Munich, the other half in Lomé, and the two locations and the audience are connected via live video. According to the announcement, the story of a stolen statue will be told with dance, marionettes, singing, acting and video switching. A lot could have gone wrong, not only technically.
But hardly anything goes wrong. In just under an hour and a half, a small, moving game about the search for justice in dealing with art looted from the colonial era develops, almost not instructive. The trick is that Gockel and Coulibaly don’t even try to depict the heated debate in all its complexity. But they know how to make good theater and use their resources wisely.
The evening offers dreamy solutions to complex problems
The Munich ones are in the basement of an ethnological museum, on the shelves there are unopened boxes with art treasures in them, explains the local restitution researcher, you can’t even get behind to unpacking them all, let alone finding out where the objects come from. A statue comes to life, that of Yennenga, a warrior princess of the medieval Dagomba kingdom. Her horse climbs out of his crate in Lomé at the same time. They were once separated during the robbery, it is said. Two items means twice the money. Horse and Princess are two beautiful marionettes made by puppeteer Michael Pietsch. They literally stretch now, look around as if looking for each other, trip over to their audience.
Two dancers, one in Munich, one in Lomé, get into a rage, as if they were representing the stolen statues, expressing the disparagement by the colonial nations, who attacked African art with notepads and cameras: “First they destroy one culture and condemn it as primitive and inhuman, then they rehabilitate some aspects that stand as an example of a great civilization,” it says of this crude logic. You can feel the pain, the longing for justice and a friendly connection to the people of Togo at the other end of the production.
Only once does the play turn into activism, namely when actor Komi Togbonou storms onto the street in front of the Kammerspiele and calls out: “We, the peoples of Africa and people of African origin, demand that our works of art, our civilization, our religion and our culture be given back immediately. ” As little as one can contradict, it is as unnecessarily pedagogical. Then a tremor goes through the room, the princess flies away, only to, surprise, appear shortly afterwards in Lomé with her horse. Happy end.
One can accuse the evening of kitsch because it offers dreamy solutions to very complex problems. But it also says “Vision of a return” in the title. And where, if not in the theatre, can one play with a utopia?