the Garden of Beautiful Lies

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Last Updated on Friday, 20 May 2011 21:31

a fairytale for adults

Ritti Soncco: "The Garden of Beautiful Lies was my way of creating a world so full of hope and beauty, that a turbulent love could find the strength to survive."

The Garden of Beautiful Lies (2008) tells the love story of two women, who are ending their relationship with anger and bitterness. Believing it to have all been her fault, one of the women goes into hiding from herself and from reality: she hides herself behind the lie "I can never change". By changing her perception of herself, she eludes this reality and escapes to the Garden of Beautiful Lies.

But her lover decides to follow her, to discover if their love could have a second chance. In order to find her, she must also change her perception and hide behind a lie. Her lie is "I am not looking for you."

She awakes in the Garden of Beautiful Lies. In this reality, appearances change to correspond to the lie. In the garden, she is a leaf, carried by the wind, not looking for anything or anyone. But she knows that you can't search for love - it must find you. So she explores the garden aimlessly. During her travels, she discovers that in the Garden, nothing is as it seems. Every single part of the garden is a person who has hidden him or herself behind a lie. She befriends the moon, the wind, the trees and the sun, who tell her their stories and how they came to live in the Garden of Beautiful Lies. All are people who fought for love. Some won, others lost.

She knows that her lover has a different appearance in the Garden. Those she meets, tell her that if their love is true, then even their lies will fit together. But there is always the danger that those who stay in the Garden too long, begin to believe their lies and are forever transformed into the lie they chose.

"Lovers don't find each other somewhere. They are in each other all along." Jelal ad-Din Rumi

The Garden of Beautiful Lies was performed in the Theater in der Westentasche, Ulm, using black-light installations by the artist Christoph Dannowski. (link: www.myspace.com/noffi-art) The scene of the leaf being swirled through the air by a hurricane was portrayed by Ritti Soncco on the static trapeze. Filmmakers Hannes Staudt and Sebastian Metzger portrayed the passage of time with projections and filmed the fire poi artist Jule Reichenbacher as the hurricane.

"A play, whose density demands the audience's entire concentration and empathy, but also a play which will accompany the audience's thoughts for many days." Neu-Ulmer Zeitung