Radio Theater /Ulrike Syha

Here goes Ulrike Syha proposal for the exhibition.

first I have to admit that I'm very sorry that I couldn't join the first meeting for the urbanity project. To introduce myself to everybody who might not know me: I'm a German playwright and I'm a fellow of Solitude since October 2006.
As for my proposal for the project: I'm just starting to work on a new topic at the moment. My project doesn't have a title yet, but I'm sure I can come up with one soon enough. It's a bigger project of which my "presentation" for the urbanity exhibition could be part of. I'm planning to do a radio drama which is based on fake interviews done by a fake interviewer in a non-existing future town. This town can be described as a "mega-city", as a big mixture of cultures, religions and forms of living. I have done another work connected to this non-existing future-city several years ago. It is a theatre play called "Nomaden". The radio drama will not be connected to this other play's story - but to the background, to the city. This city itself is a kind of organism (living, breathing, existing) - a friend and on the same time an enemy. Highly industrialized on the one hand - but a kind of uncontrollable mixture on the other hand, too. Depending on where you go. I will start with "giving" my fake interviewer an old-fashioned cassette recorder with which he is able to "move around" in his city, talk to the fake persons I make up for him. He can just interview them, he can show us the environments, he can get trouble with some people who don't want to be interviewed, he can get robbed or doing something "illegal" himself. There are a lot of possiblities. It's not going to be a well-made play story - it's more a collection of impressions, of several smaller stories, of spontanous forms of communication.
For the exhibition, I plan to do recordings (with acotrs) of what I've written so far. I don't know exactly whether we have the special technical stuff at Solitude to do that kind of radio recordings - but if not, I'll find another place to do it. I would like to have those recordings presented on several headphones in a special place where the people can sit down and listen; a kind of little lounging area. There shouldn't be just ONE big recording which has to be listened to by everyone in an exact succession --- I want this to be a more personal experience, I want the audience to create a trip of their own through the area of my future town by listening to the recordings on the headphones in an order they choose themselves.
That's my proposal so far - I hope I could make myself understood and I also hope that my proposal will be of interest to you and fit to the scheme of the whole project as well.

Thanks for your long attention,
Ulrike Syha