“… und weiße Lakritze aus Lammfell” - Ein Musiktheater über Kindheit ("... and white liquorice made from lambskin" - A musical theatre about childhood) (2022/2023)
for a staged girls' choir, clarinet, keyboard, additional music and video projections
Duration: 50 min.
Composition commissioned by the Gesellschaft zur Förderung des Berliner Mädchenchores e. V. financed by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung
WP: 08.07.2023, Berlin, St. Elisabeth ChurchDevelopment choir of the Berliner Mädchenchor
Keyboard: Frederik Botthof / Clarinet: Uroš Rojko
Director: Ulrike Ruf / Text: Ulrike Almut Sandig
Dramaturgy: Patrick Klingenschmitt
Choreography: Gabriel Galindez Cruz
Sound design: Carlo Grippa
Set: Sabine Hilscher
Video: Regina Teichs Regina Teichs / Lighting: Jörg Bittner
Musical direction: Juliane Roever
Performance material available from the composer
About the play
Like no other phase of life, childhood is a projection screen for those who have outgrown it. It is often described as a carefree time, characterised by the freedom to play and discover the world in a safe environment. Far removed from the responsibilities of adulthood, it is romanticised as a paradise. Children are innocent because they are always protected. Children are "cute", "exhausting" or "loud", but also victims and sufferers - of political or personal conflicts between adults.
"... und weiße Lakritze aus Lammfell" follows in the tradition of stage plays with children for adults, such as the performance "Before Your Very Eyes" (Gob Squad), the re-enactment "Five Easy Pieces" (Milo Rau) and the dance piece "enfant" (Boris Charmaz). These works with and about children, which have been celebrated and much discussed in recent years, are joined by "... und weiße Lakritze aus Lammfell", a music theatre piece for a children's choir that dares to break with childhood clichés and stereotypes while at the same time making use of its "medium". As soon as children appear on stage as actors, this takes place against the backdrop of a long cultural history of the representation of childhood and its discrepancy to (childlike) reality.
The Berlin Girls' Choir takes on the role of both actor and object of attribution in the play. A tableau of childhood scenes somewhere between dreamlike transfiguration and abysmal reality forms the central theme of the full-length piece of musical theatre. The story is about llamas, pixies, zippelonikas and other figures that seem strangely familiar to us. Everything is changeable, always taking on different relationships to one another and yet is true at every moment.
In Sabine Hilscher's stage design and Gabriel Galindez Cruz's choreography, the Berlin girls' choir passes through several stages of a fictitious childhood as a collective body. Sound and video define the church space as a framework set by adults. The scenes are deliberately dreamlike, vague and characterised by an irrepressible urge to play, inspired by counting rhymes and clapping games that can be heard in schoolyards and playgrounds. At the same time, the reality, characterised by diffuse experiences of violence, remains tangibly present in the play.
What is childhood? How much of it is retrospective romanticisation and how much is wishful thinking? "...und weiße Lakritze aus Lammfell" finds a variety of answers to these questions. Some of them have been inscribed in the play by adults, others are presented to us by children.