The Reality Game
A site-specific performance by Erik Pold
“Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly Man when he is playing.”
Friedrich Schiller, 1795
Imagine watching a public square in the middle of Copenhagen through a window, observing the everyday actions of its inhabitants, out on a shopping stroll, or on their way to meet somebody for a coffee, or catching a train for work. A very real situation in a very real place, we don’t normally stop to observe.
What if you were able to tune into peoples thoughts, if you were able to go below the surface of this everyday existence? What are people busy with in their heads, do they think the way you imagine?
Now imagine this everyday situation turned into a play, a performance, an aesthetic game.
In The Reality Game performance artist Erik Pold and a group of 3 performers are out to play a game with the cities of Copenhagen and Mannheim and its inhabitants.
The German playwright and philosopher Friedrich Schillers notion of the aesthatic game is put to the test in a contemporary urban setting.
Friedrich Schiller kept up to the present
The book “On the Aesthetic Education of Man” is a collection of letters that Friedrich Schiller wrote to the danish Duke of Augustenborg from 1793-95. In these letters Schiller asked himself basic questions such as:
How are we to deal with human freedom?
How do we handle the eternal conflict between our natural animal holdings and our rational sense that often contradict each other?
Have we origanised our society and culture in the best way possible?
And what is the role of the arts?
The Reality Game looks at how we answer these questions today. Are they still relevant? What happens when we portray them up against a public square in a contemporary city?
CAST
Concept, staging and performance: Erik Pold
Performers:
In Denmark: Merete Byrial, Erik Pold, Johannes Lilleøre og Pernille Koch
In Mannheim: Merete Byrial, Erik Pold, Jens Atzorn og Isabelle Höpfner
Composer and sound designer: Pelle Skovmand
Dramaturgy and conceptdevelopment: Mette Wolf Iversen, Lars Bo Løfgreen og Jan-Phillipp Possman
Text: Selected quotes from the writings of Friedrich Schiller
Photographer: Malle Madsen
The Reality Game is a Co-production between Liminal, The Metropolis festival in Copenhagen and the Schillertage festival in Mannheim
DATES
Metropolis festivalen / Niels Brock, Kultorvet – Dansk version premiere 15. Internationale Schillertage i Mannheim – Tysk/engelsk version premiere
supported by
the Danish Arts Council Committee for the Performing Arts