The Night Just Before the Forests
by Bernard-Marie Koltès – Residenztheater München (2022)
A man speaks to a stranger who never answers.
In this new staging of Koltès’s text, Robin Ormond continues his exploration of spoken address and modern solitude.
With Michael Wächter, he creates a dialogue with emptiness — a physical and emotional journey between fear, desire and the need to speak.
Text: Bernard-Marie Koltès
Direction: Robin Ormond
Performer: Michael Wächter
Production: Residenztheater München
©️ Photo credit: Alvise Predieri
Press excerpt
Süddeutsche Zeitung – Yvonne Poppek (19 May 2022)
“Actor Michael Wächter and director Robin Ormond have brought Koltès’s The Night Just Before the Forests right into the city – into trams, streets, train stations and down to the Isar.
The result is a poetic drift that dissolves the solid reality of the metropolis.
[…] It creates an aesthetic of the precarious – light as blossom dust, and sometimes painful.”
Walking Theatre – Petra Herrmann (10 June 2022)
“What a theatre experience!
Walking through Munich with headphones that pour a stranger’s voice into your ears and mind — suddenly you experience the city as he does, with all its sounds, moods and ghosts.
[…] A heartfelt applause for Michael Wächter’s magnificently lost soul
— and for Robin Ormond’s idea to stage Koltès’s text as drama to go.”