Kammerspiele #2 Demenz | Andante

Andante is a musical term that describes a calm and measured tempo, such as walking pace. It literally means “walking”. ANDANTE is set in a care home, the last place we imagine living in. Here a group of people have been brought together. They did not choose each other and continue to conform to bygone hierarchies. These old figures are like sculptures, barely still identifiable as male or female. Hardly any form remains, never mind time. Only advancing age, gradual dementia and sudden death. The characters talk away — to each other and to themselves. “It begins realistically but ends in a nightmare,” the playwright Lars Norén said of his play, whose world premiere he directed himself. Markus Öhrn, the multi-award-winning Swedish artists and director, is well known for his unconventional theatre aesthetic: the performers wear masks, their voices are distorted, their movements slowed down. ANDANTE is part #2 in his series of chamber plays spread across six episodes in five seasons (Jealousy | Dementia | Family | Love | Illness | Death), a strange hybrid of human passion and weariness with life.