21-22.02.2025 Societaetstheater, Dresden
Promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCvyEpFDn6o
Please email daniel@sloganstheater.com for links to a full length video of the performance.
Soundtrack is available here:
https://danielwilliams2.bandcamp.com/album/k-nig-lear-variationen-like-a-virgin-2
Words from acclaimed American director and composer John Moran:
‘In February 2025, I had the pleasure of seeing Daniel Williams’ recent work ‘König Lear Variationen’ at Societaetstheater, in Dresden. I found the work to be extremely exciting in a number of directions. First, the synthesis of theaterical ideas seemed to reflect not only Butoh, but also the abstract expressionism of the New York theater of the early 1990s, which I found very inspiring at the time. I was reminded in Daniel’s work of maverick directors such as Richard Foreman, although his piece was forging new directions. In that way, I felt the work broke away from the kind of stagnation in the literalism and overt messaging of much theater in the last decade. Instead Daniel’s work offers something which is abstract, and emotionally meaningful. In other words, it offers a language describing something beyond words, which I believe is one of the great purposes of theater.’
This theatre piece ‘König Lear Variationionen’ is a blending of dance and Butoh with an eye to the great Japanese film versions of Shakespeare’s drama, Ozu’s ‘Tokyo Story’ and Kurosawa’s ‘Ran’. We are trying to make a link between ‘King Lear’ and Butoh, on the basis of the idea that abjection – stripping yourself of everything that had made you a part of civilisation – is a road to a kind of clarity, to a better way of seeing. This process is what happens to Lear himself and is at the kernel of Butoh’s cultivation of the dark, the hidden and the taboo. The show takes the form of a set of variations on various themes from ‘King Lear’ in its myriad versions, in dance, movement, text, video and music.
We had a wonderful premier and second show, with a sold out and enthusiastic audience. The most positive response from the audience suggested that they were very happy to watch a theatre performance that plunged so deep into the imagination. People really came alive and often commented that they had not seen anything like it in many years and were relieved to see this kind of physical theatre again.
John Moran, American composer and theatre director said that he enjoyed the show on an entirely abstract level – which he considered to be high praise -, and we were very happy to notice that the show worked both on the level of articulating the King Lear sources and on a level that didn’t need to encounter those sources. It was very satisfying to hear that the show functioned on so many levels.
SLOGANS Theater 