by editta braun company and Iris Heitzinger

Paula is loneliness, constriction, an unhoused existence - and the attempt to remember, to bethink one’s origins, the essentials. Being on one’s own, a human among metallic items, life among lifeless materials. At times, the limitations hurt, at times there is a kind of self-sufficient pleasure, then fury bursts out and suddenly the borders seem to disappear by force of evocation. Fantasy blasts everything that confines the quest for what really counts.

Paula is a collaboration between Iris Heitzinger y Editta Braun. Iris, originally from Austria, has been living between Barcelona and Austria since 2005. She has always kept a strong connection to her home country. During her last production, Iris sang „Hoamatlandl” (“home country”) thus hitting a nerve in Editta Braun, bound like Iris from Upper Austria. Since a long time, she had felt like working with that charismatic young dancer and choreographer whose moving qualities she appreciates as well as her choreographies. The overdue collaboration is now delighting both of them by a deep complicity that feeds on their common origins, on rural-provincial socialisation and joint memories. Working in dialect opens supplementary dimensions of mutual understanding.
Two novels serve as a source of inspiration: In Die Wand Marlene Haushofer, Upper Austrian-born like them, tells about a woman suddenly shift for herself in the solitude of the mountains, among animals, cut off the rest of the world – or whatever is left of it. In Sten Nadolny’s Ein Gott der Frechheit Editta and Iris were fascinated by the role of metal as an embodiment of modern life, symbol for the appropriation of nature by mankind. Starting from here, in a space invented by Arturas Valudskis and with the support of Thierry Zaboitzeff’s compositions, Editta Braun and Iris Heitzinger create together
a small world, in which there is astonishingly much place for humanity.

Choreography, creation, performance: Iris Heitzinger
Original music: Thierry Zaboitzeff
Stage-set: Arturas Valudskis
Light design: Thomas Hinterberger
Dramaturgy: Gerda Poschmann-Reichenau
Artistic direction: Editta Braun
Inspired by: Marlene Haushofer: Die Wand (Hamburg 1968), Sten
Nadolny: Ein Gott der Frechheit (München 1994)

A production by editta braun company

Trailer Paula