-The Telegraph

 

-Dig Boston

 

“Lebensraum challenges, inspires the audience.”

-The Boston Globe

 

 

Two men are living in a small, single-room apartment. Their space-saving solutions are ingenious. Everything is multifunctional: the bed is a piano, and the bookcase also serves as a fridge. But they long for a woman in the house. To compensate for the lack of the feminine touch, they create a mechanical maid. One of the men makes romantic advances; the other sees her in a more practical role. But the doll soon shows there’s more to her than polishing her day away. She has a will of her own and refuses to be bossed around. Things start getting more agitated in the one-room apartment.

 

Buster Keaton’s films of the 1920s were a big inspiration for this play, with the opening scene from Keaton’s The Scarecrow giving Ahlbom the idea for Lebensraum. Whereas Keaton focused on the three-way relationship and the two men fighting over her, Ahlbom concentrates on the relationship between the two men that is disrupted by a doll. They project their own longings and wishes onto her, foist the finest of human traits upon her, and are disappointed when she does not live up to their idealised image of her.

 

Keaton was a pioneer of slapstick and physical comedy in the silent movies era. Back then, films were accompanied by live piano music; Lebensraum gets live accompaniment from the rock band Alamo Race Track.

The German title, meaning ‘living space’, is a literal and figurative reference to the small world in which the two men live, and the making of the doll is an extension to their own existence. The Pinocchio motif is clearly present, with the doll maker translating the need to make into the creation of new life.

Cast: Jakop Ahlbom/Yannick Greweldinger, Silke Hundertmark, Reinier Schimmel

 

Director - Jakop Ahlbom

Musician - Leonard Lucieer, Marten Pieter Holwerda
Lighting design - Yuri Schreuders 

Technicians - Yuri Schreuders, Ray Elderman, Remco Gianotten, Allard Vonk and Michel van der Weijden