Balthazar is a piece for one animal performer and six human performers. The protagonist is a donkey named Balthazar who is central to every action that takes place on stage. The project was inspired by Robert Bresson’s film Au hazard Balthazar (1966), which tells the eventful life story of a donkey.
Balthazar is a long term artistic research project by theatre maker David Weber-Krebs and dramaturg and theorist Maximilian Haas which looks at animals and their position in Western culture. So far three performances were produced in cooperation with theater and dance schools and staged in theaters in Brussels, Hamburg and Amsterdam in 2013 and 2014. The three pieces were evolving in different branches/disciplines of the performing arts, namely theater, dance and music. All three had different conceptual focuses derived from the works of three philosophers that shaped the contemporary discourse around animals and animality most prominently: Gilles Deleuze, Donna Haraway and Jacques Derrida.
The project is constituted by performance pieces, a book, numerous lectures and written contributions.
- concept & direction
- david weber-krebs
- concept & dramaturgy
- maximilian haas
- performance
- julien bruneau, alondra castellanos arreola, philipp enders, sid van oerle, noha ramadan
- costumes
- ebba fransén waldhör
- space advice
- alexander schellow
- production
- elisabeth hirner/infinite endings
- co-production
- HAU hebbel am ufer, next festival, inteatro, mousonturm
