Eclipses

28 January 2011

Eclipses is the story of the first 10 women who became the protagonists of one of the most disarming fragments of holocaust history: the creation and opening of the first brothel for Buchenwald concentration-camp prisoners.

Eclipses deals with the theme of forced prostitution in concentration camps. The first women who were recruited could not be Jews. They were mostly political prisoners, petty criminals or women who defied Nazi ideology by forging a relationship with a Jewish man. Eclipses could be defined as a film-documentary to be performed in a theatre. An encounter with history experienced on one’s own skin and not only through history books, archives and video documentaries.

The performance and play unfolds through a series of small or large rooms, full or empty spaces. The audience will enter the Sonderbau, or Special House, like the unfortunate clients of that time. A foyer full of light, simply and elegantly decorated like a true 1930s city brothel. Above the bed, in the “service room” allocated to each woman, the portrait of Himmler, omnipresent eyewitness to all forced intercourses.

Hence, the design concept: the performing stage may be divided by walls, frames with glass, or key-holes from which to watch, spy or supervise the sordid activity without being seen. In each space the audience’s gaze is overwhelming. In the play, scenography and dramaturgy meet through a forced journey, at once violent and tender, following the sad yet demonic reality of the Sonderbau seen through the eyes of the women involved.
Although pervading the whole play, man, or “the client”, is completely absent.