Tornado Watch means: the conditions are right. It’s not a Tornado Warning - there are no sirens, no one has even confirmed they’ve seen a cloud. We are just saying, the conditions are right, and so we watch.
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In Tornado Watch, Eszter and Katharina work as obsessive meteorologists to produce perspective shifts between room-scale weather phenomena and cosmic weather predictions; playing with physicality and artifice, with time and delay, with sentimentality and everyday catastrophes. The performance combines everyday objects and materials with the mysteries of the universe and comments on the parallels between theatre and science. With its playfulness and irreverence, the project speaks about the necessity of curiosity in crisis while asking questions about resources and the limits of individual responsibility. It’s also about our perception of time - playing with awareness of the current moment, the frame of the performance, and the processes that continue after the performance is finished. A subtle soundscape builds cumulatively throughout the piece, catching and transforming the sounds of rain, hail, and heat. With these lo-fi materials, the attempt to recreate weather is inherently absurd, can only fail - but it’s this attempt that is so fascinating and beautiful. Tornado Watch is part of an ongoing research into the dramaturgy of the background (“events that don’t address us”), which the duo began in 2021.
a performance by Katharina Joy Book and Eszter Koncz
sound design: Adam Paroussos
dramaturgical support: Eglė Simėnaitė
︎︎︎ BOOKLET
previous shows
HKW Berlin/ December 2021
Proces021 Festival Prague / January 2022
Maschinenhaus Essen/ January 2023
Bazaar Festival Prague / March 2023
PQ Studio Stage / June 2023
Re:Connect Festival Prague/ June 2024
Schwindelfrei Festival Mannheim / July 2024
Tornado Watch
︎ Michael Lozano, Jakub Cervenka, Lys Y. Seng