Text – Theater – Trickfilm / Literature – Theater – Scenography
Material, and important Stations of Miriam Sachs between Literature, Theater and visual Arts – and other things that seem not belong together, but do.
GROWING UP IN A MOVIE THAT ISN’T SHOT YET
To describe her work Miriam Sachs prefers terms like „Collage“, „Inter-facing different disciplines“. her most personal need, since childhood: how to enter a movie?! – Not as an actress who is cast in it, but for real. How to open up the most self-contained form of art and make it at least semipermeable. This idea is stuck since she saw Woody Allen’s „Purple Rose of Cairo“ at the age of 15 – but growing up in a home which was half film-production firm, editing room and cinematic museum, she is sure it had always been there (this might not make sense mathematically, but is still true).
2011 Miriam renamed her Theater Ensemble „Puppet Holding“ to „FILM RISS THEATER“, looking for an interface between Theater and Film. The German word „Filmriss“ also means „loss of memory“. or „the moment, when this film is torn and shredded in the projector“ . In which discipline continuity is possible? How to pick up the pieces and play…
THEATER
Miriam loves to put different layers of reception one above another in one performance, including her own point of view (but not necessarily). How do very different people read a special piece of Literature? (for example: how would Trauma scientists, Veterans, Pharmacists read Homer’s Odyssey? Is the Greek hero Ulysses‘ Odyssey a trip on drugs? A necessary de-tour of a guy suffering from PTSD? In her adaption every show invited a new special guest, an expert in real life, who had to deal with the hero on stage in need of treatment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtP6-548Log
LITERATURE
Miriam loves to put things together that seem not to fit. (for example: trying to understand the middle-wast-conflict by writing a novel about the territorial situation in an apartment, where of a mother of two, and her partner fight about their territory (Novel „Reise nach Jerusalem oder 141 Tage Warten auf Grünstein“, published by Edition Nautilus, 2005).
She worked hard to understand Jewish and Muslime culture also in reality, (especially scince she researched about cinema in Gaza-Strip, Interviews with Hamas-Funcionaries about the destruction of culture by Hamas and other extremists in Gaza. and spent years in establishing a special multimedia-literature-Music form, that allows staging plays that take place in Gaza and Berlin at the same time. In fact this work with projection, acting and interactive live-build scenography came her old dream „To enter a movie that is not shot yet“ very close. The cooperation got more difficult, when the theater in which the rehearsals took place was hit and totally destroyed by a rocket – as well as the projector Miriam brought to Gaza in order to work.
LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM
recently published: OPUS / Johnny Depp, Hedy Lamarr
Miriam took a break from Theater, when she was awarded for her prose „Die Heimkehr“ („The Return“) about antique Heroe Hercules running amok, after coming back from war. The Gustav-Regler-Literature-Award, made her realize that it was time to not only using imagination to write, but to face realities. Researching for the follow up to her first novel, she went to Israel and Gaza. besides that she studied work and life of Writer, Communist and resistance fighter agains the Nazis, Gustav Regler, who, when he left the Communist Party due to the Hitler-Stalin, was maligned as Renegat and Nazi-Spy by his former Colleagues and friends whom she dedicates the project „Defamatory affidavit of an Idealist“.
Miriam started to write for Newspapers, such as Neues Deutschland and TAZ, and the Cultural Magazine OPUS. Her fictional work in Gaza would not be possible without writing also about the reality. Her area of expertise includes cultural events, culture in general, and sometimes foreign policy – especially things happening in Gaza-Strip, in Belgrad.
Maybe it would be too much to say that she sometimes prefers investigative journalism, but most of the time do the stories happen to her, when she tries to experience something new. maybe this closes the circle, for in the beginning Miriam startet as an actress. She did this in order to be (if not in a movie at least be in a book, in a text, in a piece of Literature. She only stopped, because she couldn’t stand being in bad adaptions that sucked. Understanding things beyond her horizons for her means inventing herself new, capturing a new thought by getting caught in a new part. a new character – being fish out of water and maybe sometimes even in a pan – and writing about it afterwards.
ANIMATION
Because all this is exhausing she sometimes retieres and doesnt do anything but puting pictures together. on by one till even dead things, pictures taken long ago, happen to be alive again. this is like a spiritual summoning a spirit. in the end there will be a stop motion film or a fake document of a poet or historic person she admires or hate.
KALLIGRAPHY and FAKE-MANUSCRIPTS
Miriam Sachs started to copy handwritings at the age of 17. Besides her parents signature, she wrote texts by Kafka and Kleist, in order to understand them better. She believes that there is a correlation between the brain’s thinking and the hand’s movement. Sometimes her hand seems to have the better ideas than her head. She sometimes „forges“ historic documents or letters for film productions, for example some Pages of Hemingway’s „Old man and the sea“ for a short movie; the „Manifest of the Communist Party“ for the movie „Young Karl Marx“ by Roul Peck or the Amzon Prime series „The Griffin“. Her Fake-Originals always include anachronistic Contradictions. Her favorite Artists to fake are still Heinrich von Kleist and Franz Kafka. but she also started to like poets better, she didn’t felt connected to before (like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) – by learning their „scripture“. Since her Exhibitons in Cork, Ireland (Glucksman Galery and UCC Library) she learned to deal with James Joyce, Jack London and John Donne. But still she thinks the most beautiful Handwriting was her English teacher’s. Miriam’s own handwriting is quite messy, she is happy to replace it from time to time.
for her Adaptions of handwriting, historic documents and any kind of scripture:
www.geschriebenegeschenke.wordpress.com
Miriam Sachs - Veröffentlichungen aller Art 