The theaterworkshop with the Overseas Chinese is finished and we had last week a little showing and I presented parts of the making of the theaterworkshop as well. The participants were very happy about what they have achieved and I was really happy to share that with them. I’ve been talking to Liliana (the theater pedagogy teacher) about continuing our work together. She told me about the piece The Hour We knew Nothing of Each Other. It sounds interesting. I didn’t know the piece, I just knew that Peter Handke wrote the filmscript with Wim Wenders for “Himmel über Berlin” (Wings of Desire) which is Thom’s favorite movie. Do you know it? Read what Peter Handke has to say about this play:

Peter Handke on The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other

From an interview with Sigrid Löffler for Profil, May 1992

Your new play is totally silent and its protagonist seems to be a square across which people walk. The play is called The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other. What’s behind this strange title?

The trigger for the play was an afternoon several years ago. I’d spent the entire day on a little square in Muggia near Trieste. I sat on the terrace of a café and watched life pass by. I got into a state of real observation, perhaps this was helped along a bit by the wine. Every little thing became significant (without being symbolic). The tiniest procedures seemed significant of the world. After three or four hours a hearse drew up in front of a house, men entered and came out with a coffin, onlookers assembled and then dispersed, the hearse drove away. After that the hustle and bustle continued – the milling of tourists, natives and workers. Those who came after this occurrence didn’t know what had gone on before. But for me, who had seen it, everything that happened after the incident with the hearse seemed somewhat coloured by it. None of the people milling on the square knew anything of each other – hence the title. But we, the onlookers see them as sculptures who sculpt each other through what goes on before and after. Only through what comes after does that which has gone on before gain contours; and what went on before sculpts what is to come.