Stage play by Anton Tchechov. Director: Amélie Niermeyer, stage: Stefanie Seitz, costume design: Kirsten Dephoff, music: Fritz Feger. Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, premier on September 18, 2010 at 7:30 pm.

New forms, this is what the famous actress Irina Nikolajewna Arkadina's son Kostja calls for.

His struggle against rigidification, which remains unsuccessful in the end, also constitutes the leitmotif of the stage music: the cello is in search of a new, contemporary, fresh poetry, in search of ease in the face of the heavy quest for modernity. In most cases this effort not to fall into any trap of modernity merely ends up in minimalistic studies on sound color, unusual cello techniques in combination with human voice, note repetitions, and abstraction versus concretion in melody and harmony.

In order to walk every available path to instauration, of course electronics needs also to be tried: there is live sampling and loops, the latest technology in digital room and amp simulation as well as the dernier crie of wireless remote control. But traps are lurking here too: beware of pop or techno impressions! Beware of tech usage as an end in itself!

Locked up between all these self-imposed but at the same time totally heteronomous "thinking verboten"s it may be concluded, in Kostja's words: "I've been talking about new forms so much... and now? This all reads as if it weren't by me. As if it had no content."