Der Tisch
(1993)

STOP.P.T., The table with Eva Fuhrer/Norbert Klassen, Festival STOP.P.T. and GO, 26.11.1993.
In the table performance by Norbert Klassen and Eva Fuhrer (November 26, 1993, Dampfzentale Bern), a table with a chair stands on the stage. Klassen approaches, looks at the installation, poses and puts the chair away. What kind of encounter can take place at a table where there are no chairs? After Klassen has decided how he wants to dress, preferring to wear his tie in the selection process and his jacket back to front, then wordlessly trying to sort something out in his head, Eva Fuhrer enters from the audience room and sits down on the table. If her appearance initially arouses Klassen's astonishment and delight and he tries to lure her out of her reserve with a cigarette, the budding encounter immediately collapses again. Klassen's interest and fascination is focused on the rising smoke of his cigarette. Completely absorbed by it, he lies down on the table and fixates on the smoke. Fuhrer looks somewhat puzzled at the audience, chews something sticky, takes a cell phone out of his pocket, makes a brief and concise call and then leans against Klassen to gaze dreamily into the void. From the initial anonymity and reserve, the scene gains an air of intimacy and complicity.

The two performers will not meet for any length of time during the entire performance. Klassen and Fuhrer are an old, well-rehearsed couple who are used to each giving priority to their mania and taking it more seriously than their own partner. Norbert Klassen is not only consumed by cigarette smoke, but even more by rows of numbers. In order to better collect these number poems in his head, a ladies' bathing cap, which he repeatedly changes during the table performance, seems to be indispensable. He recites the number combinations with relish, rhythmizes and dramatizes them, or they are played from a dictaphone. Eva Fuhrer, on the other hand, seems to have movement neurosis. She repeatedly switches on music (from a radio that she has now fetched and placed on the table). She turns around the table or swings one of the six chairs that Klassen has fetched and placed here at some point. Occasionally there are fleeting moments of contact, which they both allow. However, they are short-lived and seem to be part of the repertoire of their relationship: husband and wife secure themselves, the other is still there, still busy with his or her things, everything is fine. The man or woman can pick up where they left off. Failure is always inherent in every encounter. For example, when Klassen forgets his numbers for a moment and surrenders to Fuhrer's music, this self-forgetfulness makes both of them smile and initiates a game with their hands, then suddenly the numbers played via dictaphone come through again. Klassen turns away and turns to his numbers. It is a game between man and woman, between numbers and music, between rationality and sensuality. All attempts at an encounter inevitably and continuously fail, even though both constantly long for a moment of togetherness. It is a game that could go on indefinitely. But it ends with one of them sitting on the floor, lost in thought, contemplating his numbers, while the other, after a martial arts-like dance performance, sits down on a chair and bends over the table.

(from: "Rund um STOP.P.T. Nicht vom Theater zur Performance, nicht zwischen Performance und Theater - sondern sowohl Performance als auch Theater." by Simona Travaglianti, in "Norbert Klassen. Why don't you applaud?", pp. 58-59