AMORE

The queerfeminist neo-pop band AMORE has set its sights on a lot: They want nothing less than to finally liberate love from the socio-political wreckage of patriarchy. Not to leave marriage to the tax advisors. Finding out exactly how love feels in the body and how it feels in the head. Consciously changing one's own desire, unlearning old patterns together. To love. To be loved. To realize: Love is suffering. Freedom. Intoxication. Work. Biology. Beyond the binary.

With AMORE, long-time ensemble member Aram Tafreshian presents a directorial work for the first time at the Gorki's Studio Я. Together with Team & Ensemble, he devotes himself to the great theme of love, as the title and name of the band in the piece already reveal. The ensemble is made up of six students of the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts: Jasha Eliah Deppe, Eman Dwagy, Marie Nadja Haller, Via Jikeli, Tim Lanzinger, Jakob Emma Zeisberger.

Before the actual rehearsal period, all participants read scientific as well as literary texts together, watched movies, showed each other their most embarrassing and beautiful favorite love songs and developed first scenic situations and characters as well as song sketches. The result was a piece that is both a music album and a picture album: written by Aram Tafreshian & Team, the songs composed and produced by Anthony Hüseyin & Ensemble. The stage space and costumes by Mara Pieler were equally formative as they are inspired by the conversations and rehearsals.

Finally, the path of the band AMORE can be seen on stage in four scenic images: From the first meeting to the rise in the charts with Ficken ist meine Religion. From there into the hell of success, in which overwhelming public attention, discord, self-discovery and doubt expand into a multi-layered crisis. Until the question arises: How can the desire to make music together be reconciled with the friendships and affairs within the group and the relationships outside?

In all this time, the band has nevertheless worked out six songs about the most diverse facets of love. They are all incorporated into the full-length scenic images and, as sensual monologues, show close-ups of the characters just as they atmospherically condense the themes negotiated and presented in the play.

And, let it be said, if there wasn't a little surplus hidden on this album as a hidden track, AMORE wouldn't be AMORE.