NOEMI SCHLOSSER
STAGE DIRECTOR, PLAYWRIGHT & COACH
TRAKTORFABRIK
A dark tragicomedy written and directed by Noémi Schlosser
Premiere, Antwerp October 8, 2014
“Her words carry the conviction of historical suffering… her dialogue is intensely specific and very moving” New York Jewish Week
TRAKTORFABRIK is a dark tragicomedy inspired by the war diaries of Russian war journalist and writer Vasily Grossman. After a bombardment, three soldiers end up trapped in an underground bunker, connection station Traktorfabrik.
These three very different characters will spend their last few days and hours together sharing their little stories and their deepest secrets.
TRAKTORFABRIK is a magic realistic war tale without a Happy End.
This music theater production is a coproduction between artists from Vienna, Berlin and Antwerp. TRAKTORFABRIK reunites the ever-present theme of war with absurd humor in a fascinating play for three actors and an electro-acoustic space.
TRAKTORFABRIK is inspired by the war diaries of Vasily Grossman and research on testimonies, letters, and diaries ( civilians, soldiers, and partisans) who lived through WW1 and WW2, the Balkan war, the Spanish war etc.
In Coproduction with the ' European Ministry for Favourite Songs' and the Arenbergschouwburg and the European Partners in Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, OFFValencia, and Cosenza.
With the generous support of the European Union, The Flemish Government, The city of Antwerp, the ROI community and Amicom.
Performances between 2014-2016 in Belgium, Italy, Spain, Germany, Israel, Chicago, and NYC
CAST & CREATIVES
Written & directed Noémi Schlosser
Actors Ludo Hoogmartens, Jobst Schnibbe
& Jonas de Vuyst
Music composition Thomas Gerwin
Scenography Julia Rommel
Dramaturgy Korneel Hamers
Costumes Hamoutal Ziulskowski
Poster design Petr Schlosser
Video Guido Verelst for Deepfocus
JEWISH NEW YORK WEEK WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
Keep an eye out for future productions of Noémi Schlosser’s wry theater piece "Traktorfabrik." I was lucky enough to catch a staged reading of part of it recently as part of the Emerging Artists Theatre’s New Works Series.
"Traktorfabrik," a three-person play, is set in an underground “connection station” in an abandoned tractor factory on the steppe of a nameless Russia-like country led by a Stalin-like leader known as “the Leader.” (The capital L was audible.) The plot consists of making a bad situation worse: at the beginning, war has been going on for years. The three characters are hungry but hope for a food shipment; at the end, a strange bomb has dropped, one of them is dead, and the other two aren’t sure how long the air they breathe will last.
Cheerful. But it is rather cheerful, for all that – there is a black and biting humor throughout. One character says, “I feel an idiotic sense of security as if the blankets were made of iron.” Another has devoted his life to “cataloging tears,” investigating how the cause of tears affects their chemistry. A third scratches everywhere for lice, eats what she finds, and is promptly sick; later another remarks “To be able to speak of anything but food – wouldn’t that be happiness?”
Most of the dialogue sounds like it could be taken from wartime diaries or journalism, and this is, in fact, the case: the characters speak from a wide array of sources from the First World War to the present. Chief among these was Vasily Grossman, whose diaries appeared in English as "A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941-1945." (Grossman, a secular Jew, described the war and the Holocaust with an honesty that meant his work was not published in the Soviet Union until long after his death – some of it, indeed, not until after the death of the Soviet Union.)
This technique gives a particular effect to the piece: the words carry the conviction of historical suffering. We are now used to “verbatim theater,” in which the historical situation is conveyed through real people’s words, but this is different. While the story in which these characters are (barely) living remains mysterious, an abstraction, their dialogue is intensely specific and very moving. The reading I saw was performed by three highly talented actors, Schlosser herself, Scott Volshin, and Roman Freud.
Schlosser, the founder of the Belgian-based Salomee Speelt, a mixed media theater collective, has performed with the group in Europe, Israel, Morocco, and the United States. Last week, she participated in Asylum Arts: International Jewish Artists Retreat in Garrison, New York. In the fall, “Traktorfabrik” is being produced in Antwerp. Watch this space for news of her return to New York.
Elizabeth Denlinger curates a collection of rare books and manuscripts at the New York Public Library and is at work on a novel about a boarding school in 1955.
04/07/2014
by Elizabeth Denlinger
NEW YORK TIMES/ HAARETZ THE ABSURDITY OF WAR
The Stage, an English language performing arts community in Tel Aviv, is exploring the world of tragicomedy with a reading of “TRAKTORFABRIK” a play based on a century of war diaries dating back to World War I. The Belgian-born writer-director Noemi Schlosser told Haaretz on Wednesday that she spent five years reading nothing but war diaries while researching the play. While her work explores the “absurdity of fighting” and “the choice about how to die,” she says she found that in “every war diary, they talk about life.”
Sunday’s free reading at Tel Aviv’s Yad Labanim features immigrants Nitzan Sitzer, who began acting professionally at the age of 8, in Houston and Leor Doron, a Cornell alumna, as well as UCLA alum Tomer Shechori. The evening includes a “talkback” with Schlosser.
The international production, funded by the EU, Flemish government and the City of Antwerp will open in Antwerp in October, before moving on for performances in Chicago and New York.
For more info on Sunday’s event, visit www.thestagetlv.com.
August 15, 2014