It’s nice to see what the theater can do. Or rather stage 2 in the Volkstheater. In rapid alternation to the clear, all-embracing sound of Tobias Purfürst, the scaffolding and spotlights dance from the grid to the stage and back again, individual stage elements rise. Later, a delightful starry sky lights up the ceiling of the whole room. There is a beautifully swinging halfpipe, a car, a tree trunk are effortlessly pushed into it. The audience is right in the middle and can move freely in the room. It’s like a joint expedition that you undertake with six actors. It’s called “Arche Nova”, conceived and directed by Noam Brusilovsky.
The idea is that the theater is very similar to a ship. Both are places that have been outsourced. Own little realities, spaces for fantasy, for superstition, for alternative designs. And so the audience should now drift along the Volkstheater-Arche-Nova for 75 minutes, think a little about the theatre, the stage art and also about biblical catastrophes like the deluge.
The individual episodes are loosely connected
In addition, Brusilovsky has developed six chapters for his “Mystery Play”. They are individual episodes that are very loosely connected. It’s about, for example, that the earlier stage technicians were originally ship builders. That Bertolt Brecht had Picasso’s Dove of Peace painted on the curtain of the Berliner Ensemble. The mystery plays are explained, the origin of the Oberammergau Passion Play. One learns that acting in theater always means trying out other realities. Sometimes the information gathered laps into the present, for example when it comes to the air raids on the theater in Mariupol.
In parts, the evening resembles a theater-scientific collection of material, which was put together with fresh dedication. Theater for explorers, so to speak. Fortunately, what is missing is the seminar character. This is ensured by the actors, who do exactly what the theater demands of them: they act. At first they are dry guides to the company “Arche Nova”, then they slip into micro-roles, sometimes they are sailors on the high seas, animals of the ark, lovers. Dor Aloni sings, Vincent Sauer drives a scooter, Ruth Bosung makes out with Pola Jane O’Mara, Henriette Nagel gilds a tree trunk, Steffen Link glows in the dark and Lukas Darnstädt swings particularly daringly. Something is always happening somewhere. It’s not always exciting or funny or conclusive. But the evening lives from the charm of devotion and also from the pride in this fascinating voyage called theater. “Arche Nova” tells us that this is rightly happening.