Language is the house we live in and the performance group proposal:hammer want to open the doors of their house, let others in and rebuild.
Translation processes are omnipresent, whether in the literature we read, the TV programmes we watch, in politics, in court or at home in the family. In a globalised and migratory world, translation is an everyday occurrence, but also a powerful tool; it creates access, but also promotes exclusion and misunderstanding.
With us: the performer Khosrou Mahmoudi, who translates novels into Persian in his spare time and wonders how to make someone in his linguistic region understand that "Schwein gehabt!" [You had a pig!] is supposed to mean: You're in luck!
Sound artist Sebastian Kunas, who wonders when language becomes music. Translator Ahmed Djamali talks about his everyday work. Together with vorschlag:hammer they are on stage and try to translate their theatre. Into different languages, into images and back into the theatre. They ask: Who actually is our audience, how do they perceive, what do they experience in the theatre and how can this be translated?
The stage becomes a translation room: perhaps a cosy room full of seating islands, lots of space, a translation booth in the middle. Maybe headphones are handed out offering simultaneous translation into German. Maybe a translator talks about herself in Persian. Maybe the performers silently build a landscape and contemplate it in silence, maybe light and sound try to reflect the mood of the audience in colours and sounds. Maybe there is soup. A theatre full of possibilities. The result is an evening of multiple translations about translation, in which content and form are always interdependent and which leads from the dominance of a spoken language to multispoken language.
language to multilingualism and the offer of self-interpretation of the images. A space in which many understand something, but no one understands everything. During the performance German, Persian and English will be spoken. During the performance there will be translations into German, Persian and English.
by and with
suggestion:hammer
Ahmed Djamali
Sebastian Kunas
Khosrou Mahmoudi