The Nature Theater of Oklahoma – Life and Times

Juni/Juli 2103  – Berliner Festspiele/Foreign Affairs – HAU Hebbel am Ufer – Berlin

Everything started with a simple question: Can you tell me the story of your life? Directors Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska asked company member Kristin Worrall to tell them her life story over the telephone. It lasted sixteen hours. Without editing or corrections, these telephone calls became the libretto for “Life and Times,” an epic and biographical saga in ten parts. Word for word, memory for memory, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma narrates, over ­successive evenings or in a several-hour marathon, the life of a middle-class woman in her mid-thirties from an American suburb. A life that is interesting because it is everything but unusual, and is therefore like your own. Poetic, witty and as sophisticated as it is obvious, “Life and Times” gives us the chance to observe our own lives from another point of view. The formats and genres are also constantly changing, just like in real life. Here it is a mixture of musical, dance, thriller-melodrama, animated film, book, and radio show.

Episode 2
The changing body, the first crush, the first cigarette smoked in secret – in Episode 2, the monumental epic turns to the beginning of puberty. The body becomes a battlefield, and life becomes a brutal, hazy disco, where the attempt to be cool collides on the dance floor with awakening desire. In the style of a 1980s pop musical, the performers sing, talk and dance about peer pressure, school problems, wanting to belong, and being excluded. Unedited, including all mistakes, ums, and ahems, the libretto was completely composed using the hobby music application Garage-Band.

concept/ direction: Pavol Liska, Kelly Copper
with: Ilan Bachrach, Asli Bulbul, Elisabeth Conner, Gabel Eiben, Daniel Gower, Anne Gridley, Robert M. Johanson, Matthew Korahais, Julie LaMendola, Kristin Worrall
music: Robert M. Johanson, Julie LaMendola
Costumes: Peter Nigrini
Production Manager (NTOK): Dany Naierman
Audio Engineer: Daniel Gower
Project Manager & Chorus Director: Nora Hertlein

Produktion: Nature Theater of Oklahoma und Burgtheater Wien. Koproduktion: Kampnagel Hamburg, Festival d’Avignon, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Kaaitheater (Brüssel) und Rosas (Brüssel). Mit Unterstützung von: The New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Theater Pilot, mit Hauptförderung durch die Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.