Ich mache Landschaften aus dem, was ich fühle

teenpark Production

“Between sleep and dream, between me and what is within me and what I suppose myself to be, flows an infinite river.” (Fernando Pessoa)

Literature offers us the possibility of trying out existences that are not our own. Hardly any other work demonstrates this freedom as radically as The Book of Disquiet of the Assistant Bookkeeper Bernardo Soares by Fernando Pessoa. The Portuguese writer created so-called heteronyms for his work—literary figures with their own biographies, their own styles, and their own worldviews, some of which differ fundamentally from one another.

One of these heteronyms, the assistant bookkeeper Bernardo Soares, forms the starting point for this year’s work of the youth theatre club teenpark: the young participants explore other possible selves while at the same time searching for forms for their own lives, for wishes, longings, and dreams.

Driven by inner unrest, these eleven very different versions of the assistant bookkeeper, in his own words, expose the “life we love” as a “flowing misunderstanding.”

The assistant bookkeeper’s writings are aphoristic; no linear plot emerges. It is precisely this fragmentary quality that opens up spaces on which the production builds: last autumn, part of the team traveled to Lisbon to explore Fernando Pessoa’s city, to follow in his footsteps, and to gather video and sound material. Out of these impressions, an original narrative now takes shape on the stage of the Theaterhaus—composed of thoughts, images, and movement.