Meeting Point – Melting Point

An explosive tightrope walk between understanding and ignorance

The production cooperated with the Schauburg, sponsored by the departement of culture Munich and supported by the Tanztendenz Munich e.V.

Concept / Direction: Johanna Richter
Performer: Nikolaus Benda, Volker Michl, Peter Mika and Jannis Spengler
Assistence/Video: Michael Mertins
Costume: Jörg Christel, Uwe Sinn
Music arrangement: Christoph Honermann
Light: Hans-Peter Boden, Ulrich Grether
Sound: Klaus Pinternagel
Stage management: Marie-Louise Weinmann
Photographer: George Podt

World premiere: 8.1.2004 Schauburg / München

Was performed 25 times during three seasons and guest performances at Triangel-Festival in Konstanz and at the Theaterfestival in Sarajevo

About the piece:

Three sofas, one floor lamp and an empty, scanty room – this is called the Meeting Point, a spot, where the character called Julio made appointment with four of his friends.
They all arrive in time, excited, expecting, because each of them is a loner, not being skilled to behave in public, or unknows places.
The greater is the strange feeling, as unexpected the first, the second, the third the fourth enters the room. They don´t know each other and each of them assumed to be alone with Julio.
And most of all, they get frightened, as they realize that they are all wearing the same black suit. The very one, they use to wear, when they meet Julio for special occasions.
So they start waiting, getting nervous, awkward, cranky in their characteristics and hoping for redemption, for Julio to arrive.
But he does not show up!

Instead the door falls in the castle. They are trapped in this room and the shy and scared individuals are forced to comunicate, in order to find a solution.

The situation processes into a nervous ordeal, as they finally realize, they don´t even speek the same language and Julio, who appears in an absurd way on television, is their common friend, who planned to lock them together, in order to „cure” them.
The desperation increases – the rage as well – but the space itself doesn´t.

And so the situation tilts and the four, trapped in this room, sway back and forth from arrangement to aggression, from unintentionally with each other to offensive fight. Finally, as the strengthen and weaken are quite frankly stood out, silence, serenity and ease spread out in space and lead to a fantatsic new option: the four being a group!
This new achievement break boundaries, opens perspectives, gives trust and obviously opens up to new dimension of eternity.

The multicultural society we are living in, the sudden challange to arrange with all kinds of languages, cultures, ways of living forces us to decide: is it tolerance or ignorance, is it peaceful community or war we choose.

Meeting Point is a piece about the nostalgia to build a world with peaceful living arrangements, beyond language, misunderstandings, prejudices and helplessness. It might be an typical european piece – regarding the Greek, the Slovak the German, and the tongue-tied guy who meet in this live-changing room.

Awarded by press and critics with TZ –Rose and AZ-Stern