Der Ring

Abstract: The play premiered in 2019 at the Pop-Kultur Festival in Berlin (August 21-23, 2019) and performed again in 2020 at the Grenzenlos Festival in Mainz (September 23-27, 2020). The nine artists on stage are partly from the RambaZamba theatre, but most constitute a music band within this theater; they are the 21 Downbeat. The RambaZambas open their adaptation in pop-opera format with the projection of a text on a screen at the back of the stage announcing that the work is “nach Richard Wagner.” Immediately after, two words are added to that sentence, and it turns out to be “sehr frei nach Richard Wagner.” RambaZamba’s Der Ring is a pop adaptation of Wagner’s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. RambaZamba's transformation takes the main narrative elements of Wagner’s cycle and builds a one-hour performance. Unlike Wagner’s cycle, RambaZamba’s work is structured in smaller units: musical themes or songs. There are hardly any traditional dramatic performance parts in Ramba Zamba’s Der Ring, and almost the entire performance is through singing, music production with instruments, and dance. Although all pop, the ten songs that constitute Der Ring are executed with some different contemporary styles, like rap, spaghetti-western, or techno, although always in a hybridization of styles where pop and the strident sounds with scenic effects (lights, smoke) simulating a disco take over the stage. The texts telling part of the story are projected on the screen at the back of the stage and serve, above all, as intermezzo, between one song and another. Each piece adapts a narrative core of the Wagnerian cycle that replicates the film projected on the screen.