LIFE.stories

Love, death and taxi rides – A scenic medley

A baby in space, Death in his mid-life crisis, a down-and-out goes to heaven, happiness comes to a porn star, an angel as chauffeur – 30 episodes come together to create a medley of amusing, malicious and absurd everyday stories, a compendium of dramatic fantasy about everything under the sun, life and death, servant and master, about love, lust and loose talk.

Marc Schnittger and his regular puppet show partner Arne Bustorff use puppeteers’ fine craftsmanship, skill and passion to fuse the interplay of human gesture and reduced figures into a sensuous theatrical experience. A very amusing programme with design that is equally expressive acoustically and visually is created under the direction of Martin Maria Blau, working with author Ralf Schulze, who also helps Alforns, Kaya Yanar or Harald Schmidt to find their satirical sharpness.

Road movie in a puppet milieu

The figures created by Marc Schnittger and his colleague Arne Bustorff from coloured glove and fingertip puppets’ heads seem so amazingly life-like that it is impossible to imagine it without having seen it for oneself.
Kieler Nachrichten

Arrival and departure

Each episode remains part of the whole while telling a story drawn from life that is funny, gloomy, humorous, passionate or emotional in its own right. Chances are missed, new ones seized, one life begins and another ends. We hear about love, mourning, hatred, failure and success, about coming and going. But the piece never wallows in senses that are unduly sentimental or portentous. The use of slow-motion sequences is also particularly successful, for example when we see a man and a woman meeting in a train for the first time and clearly starting to be attracted to each other. »LIFE.stories« is accompanied by calm but sometimes lively, jazzy music, and represented a real plus jn this year’s autumn theatre programme.
Ostthüringer Zeitung