Zettel’s Dream — Studies on Madness Theatre is a medium that, through language, visual design, and performance, creates space for discourse, social interaction, and – following Aristotle – a catharsis through intense emotions. This visual dimension is at the heart of my study on madness. I engage with the concept of madness and explore its various visual translations. How are intense emotions conveyed and perceived visually? This inquiry resembles archival work that emphasizes physicality and the significance of costume design – ultimately contributing to a sensuous experience for the audience. Additionally, I investigate how these effects can be told through costumes made with minimal materials and without the need for extravagant budgets. The quote “Restless dreams are in reality fleeting moments of madness,” attributed to Voltaire, serves as the starting point for my exploration of the shadowy sides of madness and its metamorphosis into something animalistic – as seen in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This madness is particularly evident in the character of Bottom, who is transformed into a donkey by Puck. This transformation marks a radical break from reason and opens a space for an intense exploration of the descent into the subconscious and the animalistic. Jan Kott’s reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, written about seventy years ago, discarded the romantic view of the play and instead interpreted it as a brutal nightmare. In his analysis, the apparent lightness of the plot is unmasked as deceptive, bringing grotesque and often disturbing elements to the fore. This perspective allows for a reconsideration of madness as it manifests in the tension between dream, transformation, and reality. “The dream of a summer night, or at least the dream that seems to us the most modern and exploratory, is a passage through the animalistic. This is the central theme that connects the three separate plot lines Shakespeare runs parallel in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Titania and Bottom will undergo this animalistic eroticism in a literal, even visual sense. But the dark zone of this eroticism also infiltrates the quartet of lovers.” — Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, p. 224 “It is worth taking a closer look at the bestiary Shakespeare conjures in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Under the influence of the Romantic tradition in theatre – unfortunately reinforced by Mendelssohn’s music – the forest in the play has come to seem like yet another repetition of Arcadia. In reality, it is more a forest inhabited by devils and vampires, where witches and sorceresses could easily find everything they need for their craft.” — Jan Kott, p. 225 “The scene between Titania and the donkey-transformed Bottom is often played humorously. But if we can speak of humor here at all, it is only in the English sense of the word. I believe it’s much more of a humour noir, cruel and scatological, as one often finds in Swift. The slender, lyrical Titania yearns for animalistic love. Puck and Oberon call the transformed Bottom a monster. The delicate and sweet Titania drags this monster to bed, almost forcefully, almost violently. This is the lover she wanted. This is the lover she longed for. Only she could never admit it – not even to herself. The dream freed her from inhibition. The poetic Titania, who does not stop chirping about flowers, rapes the monstrous donkey.” — Jan Kott, p. 227 The term “madness” appears explicitly in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in various places: OBERON: I wonder if Titania be awaked; Then, what it was that next came in her eye, Which she must dote on in extremity. THESEUS: The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold— That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven... In its older usage, “madness” referred to a state of mental illness accompanied by delusions. More broadly, it describes behavior perceived as abnormal or extreme. Today, the word is no longer used clinically, but it still denotes extraordinary, often intense emotional states. Thus, it’s more open and flexible than one might assume. For me, it is even an artistic term – tied to darker, surreal elements. Yet the historical weight of its meaning still lingers like a shadow. I chose to document various approaches to transformation in photo series, each consisting of five images. Limiting each to five photos allows both extremes and the metamorphosis process to be captured at a glance. The donkey is often seen today as a symbol of foolishness and clumsiness. Kott, however, disagrees: “Bottom is ultimately transformed into a donkey. But in the nightmare of this summer night, the donkey does not symbolize stupidity. From antiquity to the Renaissance, the donkey was attributed with the greatest potency, and among all four-legged creatures, it was believed to have the longest and hardest member.” — Jan Kott, p. 227 For this reason, I use black textile tape in Series 1 and 5. Its use as a binding element evokes clear associations with bondage and fetish. At the same time, madness and mental illness are often linked to the straitjacket used for physical restraint. In this way, my series merges the themes of sexuality and madness. Inspiration for my work came not only from literature but also from visual and performative influences. A major impulse was the Japanese dance theatre Butoh. Butoh combines elements of expressive dance with avant-garde aesthetics. The dancers often move slowly and deliberately, their motions distorted and intensely physical – making inner states visible. This aesthetic is rooted in a radical exploration of pain, darkness, and transformation – themes that are central to my own work. Butoh’s minimalist yet intense gestures offer a unique inspiration for portraying madness by turning the internal outward and emphasizing the animalistic. The white body paint often used in Butoh creates a sense of estrangement and erases the human layer – an effect I incorporate into Series 7, 8, and 9. In visual art, madness is often expressed through the face. When we think of madness in painting, it is impossible to ignore Francis Bacon. His self-portraits – marked by distorted perspective, anatomical deformation, and expressive use of color – create a surreal experience of madness. I reflect this in Series 7, 8, and 9, using color and facial expression to depict animalistic madness. A wooden pallet serves as the physical foundation for Series 1 through 4. It marks and limits the three-dimensional space in which I move while using a self-timer to photograph myself. At the same time, it creates an additional level and functions as a stage – “the boards that mean the world.” What emotions do we want to use to reach the audience? When we talk about intense emotions, we don’t necessarily mean pleasant ones. Another key foundation is the Theatre of Cruelty, a concept developed by Antonin Artaud. This form of theatre centers on the raw, often disturbing intensity of human emotion and breaks with traditional storytelling. Its goal is to shock and transform the audience through physical and emotional intensity. These principles influence my studies by pushing the boundaries of visual expression and opening new paths to experience extreme states like madness. How far can this study go? With each step, I discover new ways of visually representing madness. How extreme can these studies become? And at what point does extreme imagery become mere provocation? These are boundaries I aim to explore in future projects or continuations of this study. Might this approach also help explore other concepts, emotions, and the diversity of their visual translations? These studies emerged as a self-study; I occupy all positions myself. I aimed to create a self-staging character and foster a certain intimacy. The studies have never been realized in a live performance. The next step would be to bring them to the stage – to evaluate their final impact and see which elements succeed or fail in a live theatrical context. A crucial question that arose during this process was: What must a costume tell – and what can it tell? With what reduced means can it work – like tape or a sweater draped into the shape of a donkey’s head? Especially in times when the performing arts face budgetary constraints, this question becomes all the more relevant.

Max Löffler