Depending on the memories you associate with it, returning to a familiar place can be painful or beautiful. Or maybe both. Michael Stacheder, director and long-time head of the Munich Young Dramatic Ensemble, knows the Small Theater Haar particularly well – for many years it was the headquarters of the ensemble he founded and the scene of numerous premieres.
He will return there this Saturday, but not alone: together with the actress Anna März and the trio Anheizholz, he will organize the evening “I want to lead you by the hand to show you the wonders of the world”. The focus is on the correspondence between Franz and Maria Marc (1905 to 1916), which is a touching testimony to a great and varied love story, but also provides insights into the art scene and the beginnings of the Blue Rider, as well as what happened in the First World War.
Stacheder and Anna März, who herself has also taken part in productions by the Junges Schauspiel Ensemble (2014 in “Mischpoke”), will read from this emotionally charged and also conflict-ridden correspondence between the artist couple. The Trio Anheizholz alias Christine Schreier (recorders), Stephanie Wagenstaller (violin) and Thomas Beer (guitar) will accompany the reading musically with works by Franz Schubert, Leoš Janáček, Béla Bartók and Arnold Schönberg.
Stacheder should also be a bit emotionally charged on Saturday. The departure from the small theater Haar a few years ago was not voluntary, but linked to the (financially induced) collapse of the young drama ensemble. At that time, the director invested a lot of energy in the artistic and economic struggle for existence – ultimately in vain. “For a while I didn’t want to go to the theater anymore,” he explained. Nevertheless, that is in the past, Stacheder has been creatively active again for a long time and on Saturday, despite all the ambivalent melancholy memories, other things are in focus: the moving letters and postcards full of longing and tenderness that Maria and Franz Marc wrote to each other. It’s about heaven and hell of love and the artist group “Der Blaue Reiter” founded in Munich in 1911, which is one of the most important of the 20th century and, in addition to breaking up traditional formal languages, strived for the apotheosis of the spiritual in art.
The musical reading “I want to lead you by the hand” on Saturday, February 26, in the small theater in Haar begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are over https://kleinestheaterhaar.de or reserve. Another performance is planned for Sunday, March 20, as a matinée in the culture and congress center in Taufkirchen.