All right. Good night.

A play about disappearance and loss

By Helgard Haug mit Musik von Barbara Morgenstern

MH370 was a scheduled international passenger flight operated by Malaysia Airlines.
On March 8, 2014, the Boeing with 227 passengers and 12 crew members took off from Kuala Lumpur to its destination Beijing: an unspectacular routine for 39 minutes and 13 seconds. Then the plane disappeared from radar.
 
Its disappearance has been called one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time - because it seems unbelievable that something as big as a Boeing could be lost in a world where presumably everything and everyone is under surveillance.
And it seems impossible that it remains lost. Although the search has been the most expensive in history, at over 150 million euros, and of monumental proportions.
 
Shortly after the disappearance of the plane, the father of the author and director writes his grandson four congratulatory letters for his birthday. Their content is almost identical; each envelope is stamped with a special issue stamp. A year later, no card arrives at all, the birthday probably forgotten, and at some point this forgetfulness gets a name and becomes a disease: dementia. The grandchild's name is forgotten, the fact that there is one, and eventually the certainty of one's own person.
 
In 'All right. Good night.' Helgard Haug traces the disappearance, the search and the struggle with uncertainty - using the example of the missing airplane and the manifesting dementia of her own father. It is the protocol of an irreversible process.
 
Music is the artistic medium with the greatest tradition in making the disappeared tangible. Be it through a requiem in memory of the deceased or through a choir, which already in ancient theatre appeared as a witnessing chronicler and reported on hardly imaginable battles and divine fortune. For “All right. Good night.”, the electro-pop musician Barbara Morgenstern collaborates with arranger Davor Vincze, and composes for a classical orchestra for the first time. Will the 12 musicians of the Zafraan Ensemble succeed in making the gap and the ensuing emptiness tangible?
 
The theatre is the place of visualization, presence and liveness. Or also A-Liveness. Every stage event is permeated with liveness. The audience can be reassured second by second: These bodies here on stage are there for me, this voice speaks to me - now, in this moment. We share this very moment, here, in one space - this reality.
But: What happens to the theatre when the implicitness of human presence disappears in a performance?
What remains then?
Only thoughts and memory? The naked theatre apparatus? The music?
 
Concept, text, direction: Helgard Haug
Composition: Barbara Morgenstern
Orchestra: Zafraan Ensemble
Hands: Johannes Benecke, Mia Rainprechter
Speaker: Emma Becker, Evi Filippou, Margot Gödrös, Ruth Reinecke, Mia Rainprechter, Louise Stölting
Stage: Evi Bauer
Video/Light design: Marc Jungreithmeier
Sound design: Peter Breitenbach
Conductor: Premil Petrović
Arranger: Davor Branimir Vincze
Dramaturgy: Juliane Männel 
Outside Eye: Aljoscha Begrich
Technichal direction: Andreas Mihan
Technichal direction touring: Martin Schwemin
Artistic collaboration: Lisa Homburger
Costume and artistic collaboration stage design: Christine Ruynat
Sound Design Assistant: Rozenn Lièvre
Assistant Technical direction: David Scholz
Production management: Louise Stölting
 
Zafraan Ensemble musicians stage:

Matthias Badczong (clarinet), Evi Filippou (percussion), Josa Gerhard (violin), Martin Posegga (saxophone), Beltane Ruiz (double bass)

Zafraan Ensemble musicians recording:
Josa Gerhard (violin), Noa Niv (trombone), Matthias Badczong (clarinet), Liam Mallet (flute), Martin Posegga (saxophone), Damir Bacikin (trumpet), Anna Viechtl (harp), Adam Weisman (drums), Evi Filippou (drums), Yumi Onda (violin), Benedikt Bindewald (viola recording), Maria Reich (viola), Alice Dixon (cello), Natalie Plöger (double bass), Florian Juncker (trombone)

 
A production of Rimini Apparat. In co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Volkstheater Wien, Factory International for Manchester International Festival, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, PACT Zollverein.
Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds as well as Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa.
 
 
Performing rights: schaefersphilippen Theater and Medien GbR
Music rights: Barbara Morgenstern © Maobeat Musikverlag/Budde Music Publishing GmbH
 
Nominated for the Friedrich-Luft-Preise 2022 
 
Invited to                                                             Invited to
 
                                       
 
 
Invited to