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The JAZZCONDUCTOR
by Wolfgang Sréter
Starring Angelika Sieburg, Andreas Wellano and Elisabeth Süßer (piano)
Director: Dietrich Stern
First price at author's competition Memmingen in 2000
 
Jazz is a form of resistance
"At that time, in those days ...”, says the man on the stage. But what sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale is in fact the story of his uncle, Paul Weissenburger; the story of a man who gets caught unaware at Budapest in the cruel maze of Nazi bureaucracy while dreaming constantly of sailing across the big pond in a white steamer to do jazz, nothing but Jazz.
Set during World War II, The Jazz Conductor is the moving story of a young man, imprisoned in a concentration camp, his only crime being his love for Jazz music. This musical play makes an epic of the events, lending them even beauty through the language and the musicality.".
THE JAZZ CONDUCTOR by Wolfgang Sréter is a narration with a biographic background.
Sreter has his story told from a detached view. It is through the character of the nephew that we find out about the life story of Paul Weissenburger and are led to the events by his personal interest and his consternation.
Smoothly the nephew (Andreas Wellano) goes into the historical situations, copies
his uncle. Memory comes to present, without giving however a perfect image of how it´s happening at that time.
 
The Jazz Conductor is a play about fascism, a play against the forgetting of the past that makes this theme accessible. The nephew is a figure we can identify with and understand. When he becomes involved with his uncle's past, and is moved by it, we become involved, too.
The play attempts to come to terms with the past but without any accusing finger or brutally realistic scenes. Again and again the play emanates optimism and joie de vivre, not least through Elisabeth Süßer on the piano and Angelika Sieburg as singer, who not only touchingly conveys the musical longings of Paul Weissenburger but also the scenes of oppressive despair.
They do not explain, they do not moralise - they tell us a story which sets us thinking and stimulates discussion. It is a play which excites more than just consternation.
About the music in "national socialism": Each age group likes certain music and lives the life feeling accompanying with it. In the national socialism it was the forbidden Swing. Extremley a lot of Swing kids were interned in KZ.
In the play a young human goes into resistance out of love for the forbidden jazz and not out of directly political motives.
Even because the resistance is deduced from it that a small "everyday life human being" lives directly "his music" and does not want to give up his dream, there arise a completely new interpretation about the topic "reminding".
Not only for adults, but even also for young people.
Critics:
"Narration in the theatre is remarkable because story-telling does not belong on the stage but in books. The more remarkable if the story-telling is vivid and lively. The play "The Jazz Conductor", from the series Epic Endeavours of the "Wu Wei Theatre Frankfurt", which has just had its premiere, succeds in doing this.
In the role of a nephew who can recall the past, Andreas Wellano brings a jazz-crazy dreamer to life slipping also into all the minor roles: that of a superior major, a caretaker or that of a soldier,
interrogating the uncle. Wellano also plays the role of a rabbit about to be slaughtered with great
acting talent."
(Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27.08.2001
"The life of a dream dancer as a fantastic journey into the past ... A concentrated epic endeavour!"
(Frankfurter Neue Presse, 25.08.2001)

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