The pond

Robert Walser's short drama The Pond unfolds the haunting story of a boy who doesn't feel loved by his family. At the point of his greatest despair, he feigns suicide. Vienne zooms into the boy's head, blurs monologue and dialogue and shows how the self dissolves in emotional frenzy.

Together with exceptional actors Adele Hänel and Julie Shanahan and eight puppets, stage artist Gisèle Vienne creates a psychoactive chamber play about the power dynamics within a family. Light artist Yves Godin and musicians Stephen O'Malley — frontman of the legendary doom metal band Sunn O))) — as well as François Bonnet have created a trance-like lighting and sound environment for Vienne's piece. The pond is a choreography of human chasms and a thrilling trip.

Since 1999, Gisèle Vienne has been working on social taboo topics in choreographic-theatrical works. Her production Kindertotenlieder and the party-in-slow-motion choreography CROWD were style-defining for recent dance history. In 2024, exhibitions at the Haus am Waldsee and in the Georg Kolbe Museum presented the disturbingly life-like puppets characteristic of Vienne's work. The French-Austrian stage artist, who studied philosophy, music and puppetry, is now showing her groundbreaking work with the literary text Der Teich in Berlin for the first time after a worldwide guest performance tour.