Dying is a naked action: Orfeo: eine Sterbeübung (2015), by Susanne Kennedy

Abstract

This article examines the performance/installation Orfeo: eine Sterbeübung, conceived by German director Susanne Kennedy for the Ruhrtriennale 2015. Drawing from L'Orfeo (1607), by Claudio Monteverdi, the work consists of an immersive experience in which spectators are invited to take part on an “exercise of dying” by walking through a series of rooms where they confront silent and masked actors. This article seeks to unveil the meaning of such exercise, understanding that the experience of death desired by Kennedy begins by stripping actions,  which involves opening oneself to “self-moving emotions”, making contact with the materiality of time and finally leading to a becoming-woman, or the becoming-Eurydice of Orpheus. Such chain of concepts outlines a correlation between the presentation of actions disentangled from the dramatic mimesis and the possibility of generating variations in relation to the predominant patterns of perception.