Origin of GLUT production
Commissioned by the city of Siegen as part of the Siegen 800th anniversary celebrations.
Premiere: 3 July 2024, Schlosspar Siegen
Theatre ANU developed a spectacular and profound open-air production with dance, performance, live music, drama and light art for the city's anniversary.
We combined the theme of "fire" from Siegen's city history with mythological motifs from ancient Greece - Prometheus meets Siegen.
Figures and mythology
In addition to Prometheus, the bringer of light and fire, Pandora will also play a decisive role: The first woman, created by the gods of Olympus, equipped with the "Pandora's Box", which, once opened, brings suffering and passion as well as hope to mankind.
This female body symbolises the city with all its seduction, its vices, its desires and privileges.
Theatre ANU stages an urban history that crystallises out of the needs of humanity.
Siegen and his chronicle of fire become the blueprint for a story about the human condition in all its facets: success, wealth, cultural prestige, catastrophes, abysses, demons, vision.
Events in the history of Siegen
GLUT tells of drastic events such as the "year without a summer" in 1816, when the sun was darkened by a volcanic eruption in Indonesia - resulting in unprecedented crop failures. The ore treasures that have guaranteed Siegen's prosperity since the beginning of its history and are still responsible for the production of weapons and ammunition to this day.
The Siegen city fires - like city fires in general - tell of loss and hopeful rebuilding. Images of the pogrom night offer space for the commemorative culture of a city's history. "Rubens images" generated using artificial intelligence show that the "desire for art" has also arrived in the centre of the population of the diverse urban community that Siegen can no longer do without.
Photos from the city archives, a specially produced shadow film, AIgenerated Rubens images, burning winged shoes of Hermes, the messenger of the gods, and a concert of steel and iron made GLUT a unique theatre experience.
GLUT is to be relaunched in Siegen. It can be adapted to other cities.