Unlearning Acts

"Today we learn the following new words: sea, highway, shotgun. A 'sea' is the leather chair with wooden armrests. An example: don't stand there like that. Sit on the 'sea' and talk to me. A 'highway' is a very violent wind. 'Shotgun' is a beautiful white bird."
From the film "Dogtooth" by Giorgos Lanthimos, 2009.

Are we the authors of our own lives or are we merely acting out scripts? This question is addressed in the one-person play performed by Jakob Leo Stark, which is inspired by the film "Dogtooth" by Giorgos Lanthimos. At the center of this film is a family in which the parents maintain the fiction that the world beyond the garden fence is a dangerous place. To this end, they keep their children away from any outside influences, forbid them to leave the property, and teach them a vocabulary that secures their narrative. This goes "well" until three Hollywood movies get into the daughter's hands ...

"Unlearning Acts" takes on history and asks to what extent we would be able to rewrite it if the world consisted only of this one narrative and the vocabulary that goes with it. You can expect a tragicomic play of 120 words that shows what possibilities open up in unlearning what we have learned and how difficult or even impossible it is to turn our backs on the traditional structures once and for all.

Language German

"Unlearning Acts' is classical physical theater. Jakob Leo Stark struggles for a physical manifestation of his existence. His motivation and the countless attempts to find answers, if not redemption, on the other hand, is comprehensible, as if it were something that concerned him concretely and with great urgency. It is a symbolic liberation that spares no venture."  
(Thierry Frocheaux / p.s. newspaper)