With Micha Wertheim everything has become different: the reality appears to be much crazier than theater can also be

There must be rules and agreements, according to Micha Wertheim (52). What happens when not keeping things together? « You can’t make that for that. »

Wertheim has made a performance about this with Nowhere elsethe fourth part in his different series. Somewhere else,, «  Someone else and No one else were performances where the title had to be taken quite literally. Some visitors found the brutal provocation they saw a brilliant joke, others found the scam. Wertheim is said to have challenged his audience, for example, by staying absent himself (Somewhere else).

However, that was not what these performances made special. Public provocation is usually boring and also very easy. Exciting the Otherwise-Presentings were the attempts to let the public look at fact and fiction in new ways. The supposed provocations were secondary to this.

Nowhere else Can be seen as an epilogue, in a sense as a rectification, of his predecessors. For a long time Wertheim thought that reality was the place for clarity. By all not always pleasant, so the theater had to serve as a blissful opposite in which you could disappear limitless in madness and madness, as he demonstrated in the earlier Otherwise-Productions. However, something has changed for Wertheim: reality has become much crazier and randomer than being a theater can also be. In order to be able to distinguish, Theater is forced to be the place for rules and boundaries. For direction about the madness: « That is not possible to go. »

Understand afterwards

So Wertheim directs the madness in the meticulously scripted Nowhere else. The result is not always entertaining or fun, because the performance is largely only understood afterwards. Compare it with a holiday: a trip through the South of France is fun, but is that also the good description for a trip through Iraq? Probably not, but such a trip can be much more interesting.

Thoughts do not work linearly and can usually only be explained afterwards is one of the principles that Wertheim is transformed. So we first see a curious cry of Wertheim or an anger outburst towards the public at that time. Later these emotions only get meanings and explanations.

This is a hard rule that Wertheim imposes and that is immediately clear: as an audience you are convicted of being slow in understanding. This form of form is particularly functional. Pleasant not always, but the shape does forced a kind of deep concentration. You constantly have the feeling of being about to find out something very important. That is frustrating, but also exciting.

In the end, Wertheims feel that we ended up in an end time. The situation in Israel and his Jewish background play a major role, but also his fear that the boundary between fantasy and reality has completely disappeared. Nowhere else Is about the deeply human tendencies to want to have a place for fantasy, but also for control. If both have to take place on the same site because the reality itself no longer offers certainties, it turns out to be very unhealthy.

Spacious

Wertheim is looking for support by desperately clinging to a script. There is no room for improvisation, not even during inventively organized opponent from the public. This is not a permanent basis for both control and imagination. If somewhat unexpectedly happens, Wertheim has both lost both: « I can’t play that way! », A nice acting Wertheim then shouts.

‘Nowhere else’ is about the deeply human tendencies to have a place for fantasy, but also for control

It is wise not to assign as much meaning to all thoughts and stories, it appears Nowhere else. Stories are like flags: they can be important, but also exclusion mechanisms and an aggressive act. Words are a dangerous key for those looking for contact and truth.

The best moment in the show is therefore wordless. Tucked away in what is ironically announced as an intermezzo, a number of people from the audience together with Wertheim make moving contact with each other through a kind of organic movement dance on electronic, dreamy and repetitive beats. An enchantment always happens exactly when you threaten to look the other way.

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