Where Does the Piano Disappear?

Résumé

The stage needs story, or rather: however fragmented the presented play, the spectator is always connecting the pieces into a story to find a dramatic logic. Lehmann pointed out the way our Aristotelian thinking is embedded in our everyday perception, with his tic-tac analogy: we hear tic (beginning)-pause (drama)-tac (ending), while in fact there is only one sound. The new Zsolt Láng plays are focusing on relations, atmosphere and character, leaving out conflict and storytelling. In “Bartók`s Piano” tension is given by space and verbality, the play is constructed of mosaic pieces with missing elements that wait for the spectator to find them and link them. So: how to tell a story on stage that is not written as a story?