Moths

Moths

Moths was developed during a series of writer's workshops organised by the Landestheater Nordrhein Westphalien in Castrop-Rauxel, in co-operation with EXIL-Kulturkoordination, Essen under the guidance of the writer Maxi Obexer and the dramaturge Christian Scholze in 2016.

Some extracts of the play and an interview with the author appear in the book, "IN ZUKUNFT! – Neue Theaterstücke zur Gegenwart", edited by Tina Jerman, Maxi Obexer and Christian Scholze; published by [transcript] Theater © 2018 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld.

Extracts:

In the absence of certainty, superstition can be strong medicine. A kind of compass. A star to orient oneself. Superstition as a system to navigate by …

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… the figure caught like wildfire, not least after Wagner’s opera of the same name which was in fact inspired by Heine. With that, the Flying Dutchman exploded into popular consciousness as the epitome of the doomed lover, the eternally heroic, tragic personification of that most seductive of fantasies: failed love, l’amour fou, all that we crave for, the submission to a higher passion and fuck reason and fuck pragmatism, what if I die in the process!

Martyrdom in the name of love.

Sound familiar?

Silence.

A love so great that it demands the greatest of all sacrifices, your life.

Silence.

Will you die for love?

Silence.

Eh voilà that’s me c’est moi. That’s who I am. just come ashore after seven long years, seven solitary and maddening years of sun and storm and salt and stupor and a stone in my heart and a star in my gut.

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JEANNOT

Come on, clear out, wench, you’re in the way, the lords and ladies will soon –

JACQUEOT

Not just lords and ladies anymore.

JEANNOT

What?

JACQUEOT

Lots of in-betweens nowadays you got to take into account.

JEANNOT

What?

JACQUEOT

Gender, Jeannot, gender, you need to be correct, gender’s not binary nowadays, careful with your tongue.

KOMACHI

Not just “nowadays”. It never was “binary”. Not even when I come from.

JEANNOT

“Where” I come from. Not “when”. Careful with your tongue..

ANNEKE

When I come from. I’m talking time-travel here. A thousand years back. Life has always been non-binary.

JACQUEOT

Listen to her!! A time-traveller indeed. Fled from Bedlam, I said so, didn’t I? Pissed and blasted –

JEANNOT

Buzzed and plastered out of her head she is. Right on, okay, doll, let’s get you out of here.

JACQUEOT

What’s the matter, can’t you walk?

ANNEKE

Don’t you see I’m supposed to be a ghost?

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BRIDE

Today is the day! The happiest day of my life!

KOMACHI

Really? You do realise what that means? Downhill all the way from tomorrow.

BRIDE

I’m getting married.

KOMACHI

Ah, then it probably is downhill all the way from tomorrow.

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ENSEMBLE

Song # 6Culture Vulture

That’s who I am

I’m a Culture Vulture

I got the yellow eye

I’m always hungry

I got a million reasons

To be always angry

Through all of the four seasons

Culture Vultures

That’s who we are

We are Culture Vultures

Death & pain, they get us high

We hang out in the cemeteries

We measure the pulse of catastrophes

We feed on war and displaced races

It’s all the same whether jihadist or crusader!

We need them / They feed us

We’re vampires / Funeral pyres

And the unburied dead

Are what we recycle to make our bed

Culture Vultures

That’s who we are

Rape loot and torture

Buy us our candy-bars

Culture Vulture is who I am

And if you want to find me

All you need to do is look more closely

At your local neighbourhood Artist!

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