MNEMOPARK
The Mnemopark express is leaving the station, and we’re off on a mad dash across Switzerland aboard a miniature electric train, a scale model train equipped with a tiny video camera that journeys through pretty mountain scenery, landscapes with pretty chalets and farmers attending to beautiful cows that provide the milk used to make good Swiss chocolate. A few retirees who are passionate model railroad buffs act as tourist guides commenting on the images. Assisted by an actress, they talk about themselves by talking about their country. With lots of humour and plenty of details, they guide us on a surprising trip that reveals snatches of lives lived and fragments of history.
The Swiss-German director Stefan Kaegi is one of the founding members of the artists’ collective Rimini Protokoll. A surveyor of reality, a reality that is often more bizarre than fiction, Kaegi has become known for his use of what he terms “specialists of daily life” such as these Swiss model railroad hobbyists. Aboard the bumpy ride of this miniature train,Mnemopark ventures into the slippery and highly sensitive territory of memory to provide us with a glimpse of a Switzerland that may well disappear, a Switzerland reduced to a scale model, a country whose landscapes are kept alive by artificial means for a few tourists and nostalgic filmmakers.Mnemopark offers a peek behind the scenes at this Swiss scenery, this artificial paradise that will soon survive only onstage.
CONCEPT AND DIRECTION
STEFAN KAEGI
SET DESIGN
LEX VÖGTLI
VIDEO
JEANNE RÜFENACHT
MUSIC AND SOUND
NIKI NEECKE
LIGHTING DESIGN
CHRISTOPHER MOOS
DRAMATURG
ANDREA SCHWIETER
ASSISTANT DIRECTORS
AGNESE CORNELIO
ANNA K. BECKER
ASSISTANT SET DESIGN
UTA MATERNE
TRANSLATION
PASCAL PAUL-HARANG
CAST
RAHEL HUBACHER
MAX KURRUS
HERMANN LÖHLE
HEIDY LOUISE LUDEWIG
RENÉ MÜHLETHALER
NIKI NEECK
JEAN REITHMEYER
PRODUCTION
THEATER BASEL (BASEL)
WITH THE SUPPORT OF
PRO HELVETIA
ONDA (SURTITLES)
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
AND
LE CARREFOUR INTERNATIONAL DE THÉÂTRE DE QUÉBEC
