Choir Notation in Theatrical Context – Ulrich Rasche’s 2015–2019 Productions

Since the early 2000’s, the German director and stage designer Ulrich Rasche has been innovatively creating theatre productions in German-speaking Europe. Rasche’s well-known and central stage element is the dynamic between his bombastic hand-crafted machines (that act as the real stage within the stage), and the actors who continuously walk on top of them. Within this dynamic, one of Rasche’s most famous theatrical features is the formulation of his actors into choirs. Accenting the machines they march upon, the formed choirs speak in a unified rhythm that is structured around the timing of their steps to the tempo of the live music, as well as the written pauses between words and even so much to the individual pronunciations of vowels and consonants.
The proposal submitted is a case study into the notational aspects of Rasche’s choir parts, as well as the working processes they have afforded. The notation of the choir sections is strongly linked with the originally-composed music, and here both text and music create a symbiotic relationship, one which is in true form rarely to be seen on the grand stages of government- subsidised theatre and has yet to be studied. Lacking significant peer-reviewed sources, the case study will be developed from interviews with team members, archival of production reviews and recordings, and personal performance experience by the researcher.
The proposed case study will highlight choir and musical developments beginning with Rasche’s 2015 production of das Erdbeben in Chili at the Konzert Theater Bern, up until the 2019 production of die Bakchen at the Burgtheater Wien. The 2017 production of Woyzeck at Theater Basel will act as a significant mid-way point on which the trajectory of the study is centered.