London, England. From July 10 to 14, the Goetheanum will host the Theater Festival. The play The Diaries of Adam & Eve will be performed there under the direction of Christopher Marcus. An interview.
What is the performance about?
The performance is the weaving together of two separate diary entries from Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Adam and Eve. In it, two naive newborn souls are portrayed telling the ancient biblical story in a contemporary language. This almost takes us into the genre of theater of the absurd. It has given us the freedom to have fun with the voice and movement and to play with turning an epic style of storytelling into drama.
What themes and issues are you exploring?
As the female Eve had to withdraw and we only had a male actor available, we took the opportunity to explore the theme of gender inequality as it was expressed in the 1890s. The text could be considered cynical and misogynistic today, but spoken by two naive souls, it’s all simply a description of what they experience, with no negative intent behind it.
What influence does Rudolf Steiner’s Drama Course have on your work?
This is a research project with two young professional actors with no previous knowledge of the Drama Course. This shows the impact of the main exercises over a period of five months, two days a week. We found that the course itself did not create a particular style but encouraged the artists to develop their own individual styles. They took the five Greek gymnastic exercises as their physical preparation, the six gestures of language as the basis for their soul expression, and the sounds of language as spiritual inspiration. They used Steiner’s one-and-a-half-hour speech exercise for actors almost exclusively as speech training.
More Theater Festival at the Goetheanum
Translation Charles Cross
Image Jan Martin and Barnaby Tobias as Adam and Eve. Photo: Rudolf Steiner House London
