BEYOND – Inside the Mind of Adolf Wölfli
The Markus Zohner Arts Company is thrilled to announce the launch of an exciting new theatre production on the life and artistic legacy of Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli.
The performance provides an intimate look into Wölfli's inner world, bringing to life the story of a man broken by the hardships of a youth as a Verdingbub, a contract child, following his life story from childhood struggles to the creation of his enormous body of artworks, writings, and musical compositions.
BEYOND depicts Wölfli's difficult upbringing as an orphan, an indentured child and a farm labourer, his struggles, his missteps and his later institutionalization at the Waldau Clinic psychiatric hospital in Bern.
Viewers gain insight into how Wölfli channelled his traumatic experiences into a massive creative output during his 35 years at the hospital, including over 1,500 drawings and collages, 25,000 pages of literary works and musical compositions.
Actors Luca Massaroli and Baptiste Vurlod bring sensitivity and emotional depth to their portrayals of Wölfli's psychological struggles and artistic awakening.
To narrate the multifaceted Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli (1864–1930) and penetrate his revolutionary world, we use voice, movement, dance, music, rhythm, and projections as intricate and elaborate as the elements of his multiform paintings, which incorporate musical staves, collages, numbers, and words in addition to drawings. Two actors embody the revolutionary universe of an artist who, through his schizophrenic illness, was confined for 35 years in a psychiatric hospital. This led to a continuous production of thousands of drawings, a monumental fantasy biography of 25,000 pages self-bound in 45 volumes, an unfinished funeral March of 8,300 pages, geographical and algebraic notebooks, and more.
Luca Massaroli and Baptiste Vurlod guide a limited audience to an intimate encounter with the madness, creation, enthusiasm, and the need for expression of this visionary who anticipated Andy Warhol, Picasso, Apollinaire, Man Ray, Dalí, Magritte. Almost illiterate, he could barely read and do sums as taught at primary school, yet, using only paper and coloured pencils, he explored a fantasized world of colours, words, and music beyond space and time, free from any artistic reference to his era and giving life to a brilliant work.
Adolf Wölfli, having been expelled from a hostile and brutal world, crossed the borderline to create a new world for himself – a world of his own where he could live. By inventing a different past for himself, he managed to build a new life with an imaginary past – a life that was only possible in a new reality, different from the brutal one. A reality that was his alone, cheerful, where he could transform pain into colours, screams into notes, nightmares into words. A reality that people who remained on the other side of the borderline called madness.
In the creation of BEYOND we are specifically interested in this passage: this breaking of a boundary that separates the world compliant with social norms from the one where different rules, different types of logic, different necessities and ways of behaving are in force. This passage from one side to the other of the borderline is always dictated by immense pain, the result of enormous suffering. Put the other way round: without pressure, without vital necessity and without suffering, man would not cross this kind of boundary.
In Adolf Wölfli's case, the pressure from suffering linked to his personal history was enormous. Despite all the associated problems, fortunately, he found refuge and protection from the brutal exterior realities, allowing him to transform the darkness of past horror into light and artistic expression.
Notes for the Audience
We recommend booking your tickets well in advance. Due to the intimate nature of the play, the number of seats is limited.
This production contains strong language and adult themes, including references to mental illness, slavery and sexual abuse.
There is a strict no-latecomer policy for this show due to its quiet, intimate nature.
To host BEYOND at your theatre, festival or cultural venue, contact the production.