Lokal e.V. Hamburg 2012

In the performance An apple a day keeps the doctor away, each of the seven performers wears an article of clothing embroidered with a text that can be spoken out loud one at a time or in chorus and declaimed to the public.

The embroidery quotes text excerpts from various daily newspapers and corresponding images.

They point to the unmanageable daily flood of news that reaches us seven days a week via radio, television, daily press and various other media. A plethora of terrible, bizarre, incomprehensible, threatening and funny news wants to be digested every day.

In the six-minute performance, the seven actors throw the headlines and scraps of news at their audiences individually or in chorus. They stand on pedestals that are set up at the edges of the room. Thus, the audience is surprisingly in the middle of the action and is texted from all sides. There is apparently no way out.

The performance “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” works with the ambivalence between the clichéd reception of embroidery in general and the content of the embroidered quotes.

The image of embroidering women, characterized by slowness and tranquility at home, contrasts with the brutality, speed and short-lived nature of headlines.

In the end, digestive problems remain.

Material: Seven articles of clothing, embroidery thread, wool, 6-min. video

Actors:

Vassilios Ekoutsidis
Daniela Dreisigacker
Caroline Köhn
Zoe Iordanidou
Sanna Wandtke
Alfred Schubert
Anja Matzke-Schubert

Directing: Katharina Röther
Movie: Karin Haenlein
Idea and implementation: Anja Matzke-Schubert