Curtain Up!

for everybody 5+

A Co-Production with Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust from Delhi (India)

Curtain up, Curtain down – tadaa! Welcome to the theatre!

Lights on. One is walking across the stage. Another one comes joining in. Actors! A flag becomes a curtain – and already there is a front and a back. Full of delight and enthusiasm, the two performers jump into their theatre show, today they present: The Story! The story of the boy and the bird. Or rather: the story of the boy. But what is the story of the bird then…?

„Curtain up!” explores the different means of theatre in front of the curtain and behind: Light and music, play, and last but not least the imagination of the audience, which enables surprising changes of perspective. But thrill, excitement and stage fever belong to the theatre, too. And so, the piece by Barbara Kölling also tells about the handling of fear, about holding on – and freedom.

Premiere: Sunday, 4th October 2020, 4:00 pm & 6:00 pm

Performance: Bahar Sadafi, Mamadoo Mehrnejad
Production: Barbara Kölling and Team

Enthusiasm about Theatre Play for Children

[…]

The light goes on. A big red circle decorates the stage. Brisk piano music accompanies the first actor (Mamadoo Mehrnejad) with a golden waistcoat and a pale-white painted face, who is pulling a little wooden box behind himself on a string. Bahar Sadafi, an actress, enters – with equally white, clownish makeup and bright red painted lips. Out of a red flag, she conjures a curtain, before the two performers bring their story on the stage. […]

Mamadoo Mehrnejad made the children laugh especially with his presentational play: While Bahar Sadafi tells the story of the bird in the tight wooden box, he illustrates the story with vocal sounds and gesture. […] The bird is a symbol of the freedo, for which the theatre gives space, and the box symbolizes the tightening dealing with fear.

By Sarah Hanke, Westfälischer Anzeiger, October 6th, 2020

Desire of Freedom Cannot be Caged

[…]

With the premiere of „Curtain up!”, HELIOS Theater reported back with an own production. It was originally planned as a co-production with Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust in Delhi […].

The economical décor, reduced to a movable curtain, a wooden box and a bird, was enough to illustrate the idea of the piece. […] It was not the bird’s desire of freedom but the female comprehension that living beings may not be caged, who might even die in captivity, which gave back the freedom and the community with their fellows to the bird.

This parable, played suitably for children, with a clownish humour, tells a lot about the human need of holding on to what has become dear, without asking whether it is adequate and, in this case, species-appropriate. […]

By Dierk Hartleb, Ahlener Zeitung, October 10th, 2020