From the original Festival website:

“…, since for him it was all the same whether the wolf had been bewitched or beaten into him, or whether it was merely an idea of his own. What others chose to think about it, or what he chose to think himself was no good to him at all. It left the wolf inside him just the same.”  Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse

When reading Hesse’s Steppenwolf about twenty years ago things became clear to Mansholt – i.e. that she lived now as a human and as a wolf. These two have fought each other inside her all those years but have recently made peace and now work together. This might be a relief for other human beings encountering her presence but this collaboration is not less but perhaps even more dangerous. In fact, the wolf is not tamed as such; it just looks like it. The animal can finally stalk and kill invisibly and purposefully because her human part can now deal with the outcome. Wolfstunde is a threefold performance with beginning, middle bit and end. It is about wolf and his friends. It’s not about Little Red Riding Hood (at least not as you might know her), it’s not about Nicholson and Pfeiffer, and also it’s not about Hitler who apparently, for crying out loud, called himself Wolf.

Silke Mansholt is a German artist working in performance, visual art, writing and film-making. She has been based in Brighton for the past ten years. Her live performance works Homage to the Heart, Orphan, Die Gehängte and In Memoriam Nature and her films, which include A German Grandchild’s Funeral have been shown throughout Europe. She is currently the solo performer in a production of La chèvre de monsieur Sequin directed by Jean Lambert-wild for the Comédie de Caen, Centre Dramatique National de Normandie which will tour France during 2010.

The production of Wolfstunde is supported by Comédie de Caen, Centre Dramatique National de Normandie and by Arts Council England, South East.

silkemansholt.com