Nine Times Kleist

In commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the death of Heinrich von Kleist in 2011, the interdisciplinary project “Nine Times Kleist” compared the poet’s life and correspondence with a selection of his literary works. The focus on Kleist’s biographical background aims to deepen our understanding of his texts and their relevance to the present day. A walk-through set, combining the poet’s life and literary world, served as a frame for a col-lage of letters, films, lectures and docu-fictional interviews. For example, a psychologist and a medical ethicist had spoken with Kleist’s girlfriend Henriette Vogel and other contemporaries about Kleist’s suicide. In this theatrical installation, the poet’s letters had read aloud, put to music and staged. They was categorized by theme – wars, concepts and catastrophes – and divided into nine modules. Literary scholars joined artists and journalists in discussing the relevance of Kleist’s writings for us today.

Artistic director: Miriam Sachs
Artists: Silke Wiegand, Eva van Heijningen (NL), Angelina Kartsaki (GR), Fritzi Haberlandt, Miriam Sachs, Eva Jankovsky (AT), Claudia Oberleitner (AT), Leo Solter, Dieter Mann, Jürgen Ruoff, György Pongracz (HU), Stephane Lalloz (FR), Michel Keller (AT), Lars Rudolph + Mariahilff, Giorgos Kyriakakis (GR), Justin Lepany (FR)
Experts: Angelika Vaskinevitch (RU), Wolf Kittler (USA), Alexander Weigel, Günther Emig, Jens Bisky, Alexander Opitz, Wolfgang Schmidbauer, Wolfgang de Bruyn and Bernd Heinrich von Kleist

Venues and schedule:
Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Berlin, 30 Apr. – 2 May 2011
Theaterkapelle, Berlin, 25 – 28 Jun. 2011
Berlin, 8 Oct. 2011
Theater Pygmalion, Vienna, 24 – 26 Feb. 2011
Cantiere internazionale d’arte Montepulciano, 15 – 30 Jul. 2011