TELL
Drama after Friedrich Schiller, Nagoya, Japan, Sarnen, Gessnerallee Zurich, Switzerland, 1988

Swiss entry to the World Puppetry Festival in Japan. Nagoya, Iida, Tokyo, Swiss performance in Reithalle, Sarnen and Reithalle Gessnerallee, Zurich

Design and direction: Hugo Schaer and Thomas Birve
Music: Peter Sigrist
Lighting: Rolf Derrer
Production: Oskar Stockmann

“Birve/Schaer’s Tell is a feast for the eyes. Yet it is more than simply a visual pleasure, it is a political piece. “In what circumstances is there a right to violent resistance?”
Birve/Schaer’s Tell is set in a mine, the material is brought out of the ground, out of the mountain into the light. The main element on stage is a brightly lit pyramid, a mountain. Set in this is the door of death, the “hollow alley”.
In front of it there is a rail junction on which four rusty mine carts are moved. One cart is the “Zwing Uri”, the Gessler castle, depicted as a shaft tower. Another is Gessler’s cart, throne of power and execution chair in one. Two actresses and three actors move this imposing “stage machinery” and interpret the heavily edited Schiller text...” Sylvia von Matt-Egli, NZZ