STOOL, TABLE TINY, FIRKIN... (2004)
10 miniatures by Stefan Hardt
with texts by Daniil Charms
with Inga Busch, Lou Hardt & Tilo Prückner
saxophone, voice, noises, conception, music & direction:
Stefan Hardt
DeutschlandRadio
2004, the DeutschlandRadio produced 900 tiny radio plays, which had to be shorter than a minute. Each author/director was asked to do 10 of them. They were then randomly mixed throughout the program. A wonderful idea!
The chosen texts by Daniil Charms are without exception unabridged.
WASHMAN (2003)
by Pinckney Benedict
Adaptation by Stefan Hardt
with Michael König, Konstantin Graudus, Mogens von Gadow, Gunda Aurich etc.
director: Stefan Hardt
Hessischer Rundfunk
SIMPLY BELLS AND WHISTLES (2002)
Radiophonic Piece by Stefan Hardt
with texts by Daniil Charms
conception, music & direction: Stefan Hardt
Hessischer Rundfunk & Norddeutscher Rundfunk
Like FALL CASES AS THEY FALL (see below), these are different short texts by Daniil Charms, but in this case produced exclusively with selfmade music and handmade noises. There are two songs among them. Another difference is: originally these texts were written for children. Nevertheless all the characteristics of Charms´ writing are present: abrupt changes of mood, the absurdity of situations, the incursion of the unreal into every day situations. Therefore the texts also suit adults: from O years on.
SEX II (2000)
after the novel of the same title by Sibylle Berg
Adaptation: Sibylle Berg & Stefan Hardt
with Inga Busch & Beate Jensen
director: Stefan Hardt
Südwestrundfunk
SOAP (1998)
by Francis Ponge
Adaptation: Liermann
with Peter Fitz, Horst Frank, Matthias Habich, Thomas Holtzmann, Hilmar Thate...
director: Stefan Hardt
Süddeutscher Rundfunk
One can tell a lot about soap. Literally everything it reports about itself till its complete disappearence (Francis Ponge). The power of this »soap language«, one can listen to: it brings its subject matter in front of the listeners ears to foam and that way creates a pleasure which is owed to the words and not to the meanings behind.
RADIOPHON
Radiophon is a one hour long radio collage, broadcasted weekly and produced by the Südwestrundfunk. On one hand, it´s about a well-proportioned dramaturgy of the whole, on the other it´s about the refinement and finesse of each transition or intersection. There are no limits or taboos content-wise, that is to say, it´s definitely permissible to displace the Deutsches Requiem by Brahms with speed metal or to mix both etc., as long as there is a musical connection: in form of a harmonical congruence; in the form of two comparable rhythms; or in the form of two compatible or identical beats. One time a clarinet gets displaced by another in another piece, another time two musical worlds get mixed in a hopefully exciting way.
CRY FOR HELP OF A MAGNETIC-
VENNOMED (1997)
by Friedrich Krauss
Adaptation by Christine Wunnicke & Stefan Hardt
with Wolf-Dietrich Sprenger, Edith Adam, Stephan Bissmeier, Traugott Buhre & Brigitte Janner
musicians: Paul Lovens, Klaus Burger & Stefan Hardt
music & director: Stefan Hardt
Radio Bremen
1998 this radio play won the Prix Marulic (International Prize for Radiodrama of the Croatian Broadcasting System)
ALEX (1995)
Radiophonic Piece by Stefan Hardt
Text by Simone Schneider
voices: Reg. E. Gaines, Edith Adam, Tracie Morris, Carola Regnier & Shenja Jahn
guitar: Derek Bailey & Lars vom Mars
cello: Ernst Reijseger
piano: Stefan Hardt
conception, music & direction: Stefan Hardt
Bayrischer Rundfunk
Simone Schneiders libretto focuses on one night at the station, Alexanderplatz in Berlin, between trains, rails, escalators and neon lights. Benita, a medium-sized lightweight without roof or shelter, waves at Alex who smiles. The train leaves.
Benita spends every night at the Alex but this ritual doesn´t bring about security for her. She visits the familiar places, the shop, Ellenbergers Jewelry Box, Quick Card, sees people of emptiness. Next to the display panels: decline, dirt, rot which seem to merge into Benita.
Berlin, Alexanderplatz: once a real place, today nothing else but a traffic junction.
Simone Schneider: In this form of total cross-linking all connections are predefined.
In December 1995 Alex was the Radio Play Of The Month.
1996 the production was nominated for the Prix Italia.
by Samuel Beckett
with Otto Sander & Peter Fitz
music & direction: Stefan Hardt
Bayrischer Rundfunk
Beckett sets forth an almost playful fight between music and words. They seem to be quite spoiled and actually inept for competition. In this altercation, music unfolds as bale if you or words try to construe. Over and over again, although it often seems to obey, it unsettles words. And bit by bit words are changing their attitude, perhaps they strive for precision and veracity?
CASCANDO (1994/95)
by Samuel Beckett
with Otto Sander
music & director: Stefan Hardt
Bayrischer Rundfunk
Like a sound engineer an opener gives a voice its say in order to silence its tongue with the set phrase And I close and to switch music on with the set phrase And I open the other. Cascando deals with the connection between language and music and, therein akin to The Last Tape, with the bale of memory.
EVERY NIGHT I WISH FOR A DREAM
MURDER. TRY IN FOUR VOICES. (1994)
by Michael Farin
with Michael Wittenborn & Peter Roggisch
director: Stefan Hardt
Bayrischer Rundfunk
This is a collage of soundbites and statements by murderers and victims whereby Michael Wittenborn performs as the murderers as well as the victims.
IL GUFO - THE HANGMAN OF SASSO FETORE (1994)
by John Hawkes
with Ernst Stötzner and many others
adaptation & direction: Stefan Hardt
Hessischer Rundfunk
Il Gufo, the hangman of Sasso Fetore, reigns in seemingly ahistorical times over an Italian village in the mountains. A spirit of oppression rules Sasso Fetore and in its retinue only angst and slavishness flourish.
John Hawkes composes the image of a landscape, which above all seems to be coarse, lugubrious and gloomy, wrapped in an atmosphere of implacability which gradually becomes a metaphor for fascism, an image which leaves far behind the cliché of Italy as a country where the lemons blossom.
BLACK PARADISES (1993)
by Rosa Liksom
with Beate Jensen, Elke Petri, Erika Skrotzki, Manfred Steffen & Micheal Wittenborn
selection & direction: Stefan Hardt
Südwestfunk
A woman shoots her husband with the rifle for elks because he drinks too much and doesn´t care about the harvest; another is already widowed and feeds exclusively off chocolate; a man lives with his mother in a happy symbiosis even after her death; another is happy that there will be military manoeuvres in his village and therefore always something to look at and to talk about when the bombs hit the ground behind the sauna.
Short monologues in simple language describe episodes or pointed stories about the life of its narrators. And even though these bizarre incidents often break off abruptly or at least surprisingly, they respectively seem to reflect a whole life.
The situations, the characters of the figures portrayed, their age and somehow also their social status change from story to story. Nevertheless the portraits don´t stand for themselves.
You need some time to be ripe for the sensation that it´s about black paradises.
THE LEGACY OF THE DICK (1993)
by Elmar Podlech
with Ulrich Wildgruber, Irm Hermann, Ingrid van Bergen...
musical conception & direction: Stefan Hardt
Hessischer Rundfunk
This production, a sort of soul jazz-whodunit, in which each character has got its own melody or riff, was - linked to 240 drawings by Thomas Weiser on slides - staged several times in the Mojo Club in Hamburg.
ESQUISSE RADIOPHONIQUE (ROUGH FOR RADIO I) (1993)
by Samuel Beckett
with Barbara Nüsse & Otto Sander
music: Steve Lacy
with Steve Lacy, soprano saxophone, Jean-Jacques Avenel, bass & Nicolas Isherwood, voice
director: Stefan Hardt
Radio Bremen
The Esquisse Radiophonique (Rough For Radio I) was written in 1960 but only published in 1973. It´s the pre-stage or germ of Words And Music and Cascando. The BBC tried to produce the fragment but Beckett didn´t like the result. So it wasn´t broadcasted. It remained unproduced till 1993, that is to say, till the version at hand.
The central positions of Voice and Music which remain entirely open force the director to make difficult decisions: Voice and Music, with regard to the volume, nearness/distance and the duration of their presence, act completely autonomous. In this world premiere a text is given to the Voice: the poem Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba by James Joyce. The music reconstructs the gradually growing distance of the scene and the language from a describable position, it sets »pauses« and decrees.
FALL CASES LIKE THEY FALL (1993)
Radiophonic Piece by Stefan Hardt
with texts by Daniil Charms
with Ulrich Wildgruber, Hermann Lause, Burkhard Klaußner, Sven-Erik Bechtholf & Stefan Hardt
musicans: Paul Lovens, drums; Alexander von Schlippenbach, piano; Torsten Müller & Norbert Achtelik, bass; Stefan Hardt, saxophones & voice
conception, music & direction: Stefan Hardt
Radio Bremen with Hessischer Rundfunk
17 short pieces of prose by Daniil Charms are illuminated by different musical elements and procedures. Their structure and their texture should become notedly visible under changing light. Stylistically the respective music ranges from classic over jazz and free jazz to punk, cartoon music and noises as »close ups«. There are collages of can music and original music, own compositions and elements of free improvisation, orientated by the »stage directions«. Nearly always the music conducts the arrangement and shaping of the texts. The music points out the fractures between the sentences and lays open the abrupt changes of mood.
FALL CASES LIKE THEY FALL wins 1st prize in the category »direction« at the International Radio Drama Contest in Moscow 1993.
The piece has been staged in public several times: during the Week Of Radio Play in Berlin, in Hamburg in Lichtmeß, in Frankfurt in the Mouson-Turm etc..
BOULEVARD (1992)
by Dietmar Guth
with Hans-Burkhard Klaußner, Erika Skrotzki & Dieter Hufschmidt
director: Stefan Hardt
Radio Bremen
LADY SINGS THE BLUES -
BILLIE HOLIDAY REMEMBERS (1991)
Extracts of Billie Holiday´s autobiography, compiled and adapted by Stefan Hardt
with Barbara Nüsse & Christian Brückner
director: Stefan Hardt
Radio Bremen
