The face of a city is not revealed by its outward appearance, not by its mere standing and existence and the life and activity that surrounds it, but by its being in the flow of time. Human hands have built it and are constantly building and tinkering with it.
The city is not something at rest in itself, but the eternal restlessness, the alternation of becoming and decay.Gustav Engel: Bielefeld.
Face and essence of a city
The Kesselbrink has undergone many metamorphoses: from the former cattle pasture, the Köttelbrink, to the discovery of a medicinal spring, to the imperial parade ground and showmen's square, to the later Jewish deportation collection point. This square has seen many personalities come and go. It has experienced many events.
Theater Anu from Berlin stages selected themes and personalities of the Kesselbrink in an extraordinary installation made of hundreds of canopies: Visitors encounter the nail smith and show booth owner Julius H. Pottharst, who was a frequent guest on the Kesselbrink in the 19th century with his "Mechanical Theatre", or the former president of Arminia Bielefeld, Julius Hesse, who was deported as a Jew during the Nazi dictatorship. The urban planner Julius Albert Talheimer was created after researching the largest underground car park project in Germany in the 1960s. Other topics are dealt with more freely, such as the Kesselbrink as a former cattle pasture outside the city or the healing spring on the Kesselbrink, which soon dried up.
The production does not claim to be documentary, Theater Anu transforms researched stories and personalities into a poetic theatre of encounters: Whoever enters the dream world of floating canopies experiences a sensual theatre experience of atmosphere, installation and curious figures.
Every city has a face.
This transforms over the course of centuries upon centuries.
But there always remains a memory of its development and of its former inhabitants,
which is not without influence on today.
Sigrid Lichtenberger: Encounters in Bielefeld