Wir treiben die Liebe auf die Weide

In the summer of 2017 Carsten “Erobique” Meyer and Paul Pötsch discover an inconspicuous moving box at the roadside during a bicycle tour around Lake Zurich. Inside is a treasure of unimaginable value: an exquisite collection of records from AMIGA, the GDR label for popular music. Two years later – and 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall – Carsten “Erobique” Meyer, known and loved for his one-man live disco ecstasies and film music (among others “Tatortreiniger”), Trümmer-Dandy Paul Pötsch and director Lea Connert, remember this find and deal with a blind spot in German cultural history: the musical GDR heritage of the 60s and 70s. At that time songs were written with a commitment to jazz, Afrobeat, Schlager, Soul, Tropicália and Funk, which have absolutely nothing to do with the grey cliché image of the GDR. These compositions and lyrics from socialism flew by the censorship so hair-raight that they just passed through as poetry and groove so impudently hard that you can easily break down every disco between Wismar and Konstanz into its individual parts. In “Wir treiben die Liebe auf die Weide”, a show band around Meyer and Pötsch reinterprets pieces by musicians* such as Uschi Brüning, Veronika Fischer, Nina Hagen and Manfred Krug with Polly Lapkovskaja, Marcel Römer, Pola Lia Schulten and surprise guests. Supplemented with documentary material and lyrics, an intensive concert happening emerges, celebrating the special significance of music, its hidden resistance and soft subversiveness.

We drive love out to pasture is not an evening of nostalgia, but rather a happening with euphoric mass dance that relies on the timelessness of the pieces.

Lea Connert (director)

Lea Connert studied theatre studies at the FU Berlin from 2001-2007 and theatre direction at the HfMT Hamburg from 2008-2012, with a focus on play development and performative installations. In 2012 she received a scholarship from the ZEIT Foundation Lincoln Center Directors Lab in New York City, in 2013 she was Artist in Residence at Fleetstreet Theater Hamburg. Since 2013 she has been a freelance director and production manager for Hajusom, the Dockville Kunstcamp, Lichthof Theater, Barner 16, and others.

Carsten “Erobique” Meyer (musical direction)

Since 1997 Carsten Meyer has been performing under the name EROBIQUE alone at parties and in clubs in order to animate the young people with his improvised and unconventional disco music to dance parties. He released music with his band International Pony (together with DJ KOZE and Cosmic DJ) and worked at the same time on many German stages as a theatre composer and musician, among others for Studio Braun, Stefan Pucher or Herbert Fritsch. In 2005 Meyer created the ‘Suite for Gilbert & George’ for the Munich ‘Haus der Kunst’, which accompanied the great retrospective of the British artist couple. In addition to many musical collaborations (including the musical project ‘Songs for Joy’ with Jacques Palminger at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin), radio plays for WDR and SWR and invitations to musical exchanges to Israel, Brazil and the Ivory Coast, he composed music for film and television (including “Fraktus”, “Der Tatortreiniger”).

Paul Pötsch (musical direction and dramaturgy)

Paul Pötsch is singer and lyricist of the band “Trümmer”. In 2014 he received the German Record Critics’ Award. He wrote theatre music for Stefan Pucher at the Thalia Theater, received a commission at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin 2015. As an actor he was involved in theatre, television and film works with Schorsch Kamerun, René Pollesch, Edward Berger and others.

Isabelle Kaiser (stage & costume)

Isabelle Kaiser is a freelance stage and costume designer. Between 2009 and 2014 she studied scenography at the Zurich University of the Arts and the Berlin University of the Arts with a focus on stage design. In 2015/16 she worked as a stage design assistant at the Zurich Opera House. During the current season she is assisting Herbert Fritsch and Hartmut Meyer at the Zurich Opera House and Schauspielhaus. As a cultural scholarship holder of the Swiss canton Thurgau 2016/17 Isabelle Kaiser develops her own theatrical and free artistic projects at home and abroad.