Frankfurt Lab

“Erstolpern – A Lecture Series on the Cemetery of Clowns” is a performance situated between documentary research and theatrical fiction. At the heart of the lecture series is the Cimitero dei Circensi, a cemetery in Bussolengo, northern Italy, where mainly clowns and circus performers are buried.

A lecturer guides the audience from a lectern through academic presentations and accounts of current research. As the performance unfolds, disruptions and contradictions emerge: statements and documentary material contradict one another, confetti rains down, music interrupts the lecture, a wind-up car drives across the stage, a bell rings. The lecturer begins to stumble. Gradually, the rigid format of the lecture breaks open and the space transforms into a circus ring. The cemetery becomes a symbol of a place that speaks of presence and absence, of people, stories, and memories that exist while simultaneously having disappeared.

What is the clown doing in the cemetery? Here, the clown occupies an in-between position, moving between life and death, between falling and standing, between truth and fiction. What matters is not whether the Cemetery of Clowns actually exists, but rather which images, memories, and sensations emerge collectively in the course of the search.