Leopold von Verschuer

Alvaro García de Zúñiga and Leopold von Verschuer first met in Lisbon in 1997. Leopold was on tour with a Valère Novarina's play, "La chair de l'Homme", a play that Leopold had translated into German. In fact, it was Valère's translator into Portuguese, Dóris Graça Dias, that presented them to each other. Doris was also to translate a couple of Alvaro's plays : "Le Théâtre n'est que du Cinéma" and "Théâtre Impossible".

"Théâtre Impossible" was comissioned by Prof. Yvette Centeno for the Gulbenkian Foundation in 1998. It was written for Leopold and to be played as a solo ponctuated here and there by a voice off, Alínea B. Issilva.

This play opened in Lisbon in November 1998 and a few years, latter, in 2002 and 2003, Leopold, within his independent theater company named Théâtre Impossible produced a tour of the play in several German cities and in Austria.

This tour brought the attention of Markus Heuger, from the Studio Akustische Kunst of WDR 3 to Alvaro's and Leopold joint work. They were therefore invited to propose a project for the SAK. A few years before, in 2000, Alvaro had participated in a contemporary art bienale with a "manual" that Leopold had seen in Lisbon. And the idea of transforming this "manual" into a Hörspiel was born. Manual became Manuel - half man, half handbook, a radio trilogy that was first broadcasted in 2003 & 2004. Leopold played the main character and was also the translater of the play into German.

Broadcasted in 2003 & 2004 Manuel's trilogy was considered "a remarkable achievement in recent radio art (Markus Heuger).

Live presentations of the radioplay in Lisbon (Goethe Institut, 2005) and Berlin (Theater Discounter, 2006) were performed mixing live acting and improvisation with excerpts of Manuel.

...to be continued...

CV available in German , in French and in Portuguese