Die beiden Wissenschaftler Snaut und Satorius sind schon viel zu lange in einem minzgrünen Raumschiff weit weg von der Erde und Psychiaterin Kris Kelvin hat viel mehr Fragen als Antworten: Vom 7. bis zum 10. Februar 2020 führt Arts Liberated das Theaterstück Solaris in englischer Sprache auf. Maddalena spielt selbst in dem Stück mit und hat sich mit den Regisseur*innen unterhalten.

“Humans were created by nature so they could learn her ways. In this endless search for the truth, humans are condemned to knowledge.”

This weekend, February 7th to 1oth 2020, the theatre group of the Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty Arts Liberated will put its newest play on stage: Solaris. Based on the 1972 Soviet movie of the same name, which in turn is based on the book Solaris (1961) by the Polish writer Stanisław Lem, Solaris talks about human rationality, the search for truth and its clash with our instincts and feelings. It takes place in a dream-like, mint green space ship, where two scientists – Snaut and Satorius –  have been away from Earth for far too long. The three directors of this production, Lukas Wiehler, Fenja Jahn, and Paul Isselstein, answered some questions for us.

First off: Why mint green? 

“We wanted to create a hostile, inhuman environment because that’s what we imagine spaceships to be like. It is uncomfortable, as our own search for truth can be. There is no particular message, no particular question that is answered. We want the audience to continuously rethink their intuitions throughout the play.”

The story follows psychiatrist Kris Kelvin as she embarks on a spaceship where another scientist had committed suicide just a few weeks before. Tormented by the necessity of making the unknown known, Kris eventually ends up with more questions than answers. As the past comes back to the present, and rationality starts to fail its purpose, Kris will realise that sometimes it is ok to just go along with whatever we cannot understand. Or is it?

“It’s always hard to adapt a movie to the theatre – especially a movie with amazing camera shifts on the Solaris ocean, and of the characters flying through space. These are some key moments of the movie that we cannot reproduce – and we don’t try to. We were inspired by the movie, then we looked at the script and we thought: we can do something from it. I think that’s almost as far as the relationship between our play and the movie goes. We used it as a basis, to create our weirdly modern, weirdly vintage mint green version of Solaris.”

That opens another door: What exactly is Solaris?

“A deep-sea jellyfish” (Lukas); “an Ocean with skin” (Paul); “a very smart computer” (Fenja).

Let’s try another approach: What is Solaris to you?

“Philosophically, it is the limitation of human knowledge. It reminds humanity to tune it down.” (Lukas); “For me, it’s a metaphor, or the human sub-consciousness – a world that is very close to us, but yet we cannot fully access it.” (Fenja); “For me, it’s when you are thrown into the world, and you have no measures to fully cope with it. But more concretely, it is a creative force, maybe it can even think.” (Paul).

One final burning question for the directors: Do you think your version is better than Tarkovskij’s?

Embarrassed silence. “Of course, our version is better”. Laughter. “We are joking, obviously. Please, do not write that in the article.”

Info

Was: Studentisches Theater

Wann: 7. bis 10. Februar 2020 um 20 Uhr

Wo: Theatersaal Bertoldstr. 17

Tickets kosten 6 €/4€ ermäßigt und sind vor der Mensa zwischen 12 und 14 Uhr oder in der Buchhandlung Ludwig erhältlich.

Foto: Fenja Jahn

Written by Maddalena Fazzo Cusan

Veröffentlicht am 4. Februar 2020