Sabine Harbeke

Sabine Harbeke (born March 21, 1965 in Affoltern am Albis ) is a Swiss playwright , theater director and university lecturer.

Life and theater work

Life

Sabine Harbeke first obtained the gymnastics and sports teacher diploma II at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich , before she then studied visual communication at the Lucerne University of Art and Design from 1991 to 1995 . From 1996 to 2002 she lived in New York, where she worked in the independent film scene, made documentary and fictional short films and graduated from the School of Visual Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors in 1998 . Since then she has worked as a filmmaker, playwright and director and mostly stages the world premieres of her plays herself. She performed her first stage text god exists in 1999 for the Hope and Glory Festival in Zurich. Sabine Harbeke lives in Zurich; she writes and stages a. a. for the Theater am Neumarkt Zurich , the Theater Basel , the Thalia Theater (Hamburg) and the Theater Kiel . She teaches at the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts , the Hamburg University of Music and Theater and the Lucerne University of Art and Design . Since 2009 she has been the director of the Bachelor in Theater Directing at the Zurich University of the Arts .

Theater work

While the themes in Harbeke's plays revolve around general problems, the characters and language are shaped by the place of origin and performance, where she finds the initial spark for the dramatic text during research. Her texts are primarily characterized by their linguistic precision and rhythm: everyday language becomes absurd through condensation and rhythmization. The dialogues are characterized by a distrust of language.

Her German-English piece and Jetzt / and Now is about the loss of reliability in a world after September 11th . Harbeke studied it together with American and German actors in 2004 at the Hamburg Thalia Theater . It tells «… stories that sound like chatter and reveal their depths of hell in an about-face. [...] The dramatic nature of the stories becomes playable because Sabine Harbeke is a purist [...] Nothing wants to seem more than it is, nothing to mean more than it seems, "is the verdict of Die Welt and the Hamburger Abendblatt writes:" Harbeke tells an oppressively unpretentious story Everyday life [...] It's about guilt and lies and the effort to maintain an everyday life. Everyday Ground Zero ».

The play only today , which premiered in 2004 at the Theaterhaus Gessnerallee , has the subtitle a play based on short stories by raymond carver . The 1993 episode film Short Cuts by Robert Altman was based on his short stories . Harbeke's piece tells several independent stories of short encounters between average people who have lost their balance due to their everyday problems and thus find themselves in downright bizarre situations. The theme of “love” holds these independent stories together, in which the characters tell of their situations. The scenes are formally linked by the figures, which, as in Artur Schnitzler's round dance, alternate.

In the drama anyway , a commissioned work for the Bochum theater , numerous small life disasters are told. The author had researched for this piece in the Bochum city environment. “Life finds its way” is the motto of her stage text. The people who have fallen out of their down-to-earth existence are not depicted at home, but the scenes always take place in public places, for them there is no longer any retreat into a protected private atmosphere. Harbeke's theme in anyway is the arduous struggle for everyday life and the insanity of human relationships. Regarding the “lovingly brushed out episodes”, however, a critical comment is made: “Despite all the colorfulness of the scenes, one misses the depth of field”.

Schonzeit , created in 2006 as a commissioned work for Theater Kiel , shows characters who are at a turning point in their lives. “At Gisela's snack bar on the Baltic coast, they can rest for a while, sorting themselves out before everything changes forever: the brief, rhythmic flow of Harbeke's language creates a framework for the Nordic indolence; […] The fragile images are disturbing, melancholy, comical and always convey the feeling: It could have been different. A small cosmos of futility in which Sabine Harbeke once again proves to be a theatrical fine draftsman, one who perceives the slightest fluctuations in the fragile network of moods and prepares them ». The dance at night is different ( Nationaltheater Mannheim , 2006) once again about the loss of reliability. At night, says the author, the familiar order shifts: “Far from everyday life, other encounters, surprises and confrontations are possible. A certain drowsiness or exhaustion sets in, so that you can no longer see or look as closely as in the wide awake state and things slip away from you ».

Her play mundschutz ( Theater Basel , 2008) is about experiences of violence in everyday life. The focus is on the characters who tell their stories in competition and struggle for recognition. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung found the stories too constructed and criticized the fact that the author “mainly tells her characters about experiences of violence and hardly allows them to relate to one another”.

Works

Drama and performances

• mouthguard . Premiere Theater Basel , director: Sabine Harbeke, Basel 2008
• anyway . Premiere at the Schauspielhaus Bochum , director: Sabine Harbeke, Bochum, 2007
• already time . Premiere Theater Kiel , director: Sabine Harbeke, Kiel, 2006
• at night it's different. a lot . Premiere at the Nationaltheater Mannheim , directed by Christine Schneider, Mannheim, 2006
• only today. a play based on short stories by raymond carver . Premiere Theaterhaus Gessnerallee, director: Barbara David Brüesch, Zurich, 2004
• and now / and now . Thalia Theater , directed by Sabine Harbeke, Hamburg, 2004
• pleasure garden . Premiere Theater Neumarkt , director: Sabine Harbeke, Zurich, 2003
• the sky is white . Premiere Theater Neumarkt, director: Sabine Harbeke, Zurich, 2003
• snow in april . Theater Neumarkt, director: Sabine Harbeke, Zurich, 2001
• wish helps . Premiere Theater Neumarkt, director: Sabine Harbeke, Zurich, 2000
• god exists . Theaterhaus Gessnerallee, director: Sabine Harbeke, Zurich, 1999

Film, television and radio plays

• 1997: new york, early morning (film)
• 1998: june (film)
• 1999: seefeld (film). Swiss television TV3
• 2003: snow in april (radio play). Saarland radio
• 2004: lustgarten (radio play). Swiss radio DRS 2

literature

Quote

• “I told her that I didn't understand her well. very bad. what should I do, I could neither run away nor call back. she spoke of an inexplicable breach of trust, unexpected and incomprehensible. after so many years. and in the midst of this crowd of disappointed, noisy people, i went in a direction i didn't want to go because nothing else was possible. I was very happy when I saw the phone booth. i'm going to a phone booth with my cell phone, i said. It's quiet in here and I can speak loudly without restraint ».

Text output

• at night it's different. a lot . In: Good is what you like. Experiments on contemporary judgment. Four plays . Publishing house of the authors, Frankfurt / M. 2006. ISBN 3-88661-289-9
• pleasure garden . In: Theater, Theater. Current pieces 15 . Fischer, Frankfurt / M. 2005. ISBN 3-596-16869-4
• the sky is white . In: Theater, Theater. Current pieces 13 . Fischer, Frankfurt / M. 2003. ISBN 978-3-596-16027-3
• snow in april . In: Theater, Theater. Current pieces 12 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2002. ISBN 978-3-596-15664-1

Secondary literature

• Ursina Greuel: Young theater scene in Switzerland . In: pivot point. The Swiss literary magazine . No. 113, August 2002, Basel. ISSN  0012-6055
• Martin Halter: hit and run into body therapy . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 23, 2008
• NN: Herbeke, Sabine . In: Lexicon of contemporary Swiss writers [7]
• Veronika Sellier and Harald Müller (editors): Piece-Werk 4, German-Swiss drama . Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2005. ISBN 3-934344-55-0
• Tan Wälchli: From paradise on Freud's couch. New plays by Sabine Harbeke, Peter Stamm and Lukas Bärfuss . In: The weekly newspaper of February 27, 2003
• Franz Wille: In problem operation . In: Theater Today . No. 12/2007. Berlin. ISSN  0040-5507

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hella Kemper: Bilingual Variations on a Beacon of Speechlessness . [1] Retrieved November 12, 2009
2. ↑ Everyday Ground Zero . In: Hamburger Abendblatt of October 22, 2004 [2] Retrieved on November 12, 2009
3. ↑ Knut Lennartz: Colorful, any . In: The German Stage. Reviews . Retrieved on April 29, 2008 [3]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ Ruth Bender: Fine drawing . In: Die Deutsche Bühne Online [4]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 10, 2009  
5. ↑ Sabine Harbeke in the workshop for stage and film (Wiesbaden); accessed on April 29, 2008 [5]
6. ↑ Martin Halter in the FAZ edition of April 23, 2008
7. ↑ From the play “mundschutz”, quote on the Theater Basel website, accessed on April 29, 2008 [6]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Web links

• Literature by and about Sabine Harbeke in the catalog of the German National Library
• Conversation with the author and director Sabine Harbeke