The Charlotte Salomon Project: Life? Or Theater?

Created through an ongoing discovery process examining the life of relatively unkown and extraordinary young women living in very difficult times, The Charlotte Salomon Project: Life? Or Theater? features texts drawn from the collection of over 1,300 paintings created by artist Charlotte Salomon during World War II. The paintings illustrate Salomon’s complex family history and her relationships with her mother, father, step-mother and an operatic voice teacher who became her obsession. Experimenting with performance styles and techniques, Polybe + Seats attempt to animate the chronology of events and characters from these paintings.

The Charlotte Salomon Project is divided into three sections; The Prelude, which references a section of paintings dealing with Salomon’s childhood and family history, is a performance installation in a gallery space that incorporates painting-inspired exhibits, live action, projection, miniatures, and replicas of the paintings. Audiences make their way through Salomon’s childhood memories before entering into the performance space. In the Main Section, audiences meet Amadeus Daberlohn, who later becomes the focus of the young artist’s obsession. The Epilogue takes place after Salomon’s escape from Berlin and uses movement and design suggestive of the abstract style of Salomon’s final paintings.