i (to be defined)

For two years Benno Steinegger asked a wide range of people the same thing: “describe me”.

The answers were as diverse as the relationships he shared with the people he asked: from his physician, who spoke about his blood test, to his mother, who went through his biography, to a shaman who described him through his own spiritual visions. Listening back to those interviews became a journey into his own identity: Who am I, who can I be, and how do the views of others differ from the way I see myself?

The starting point of i (to be defined) is the reconstruction of an identity through the eyes of the people who know it. The process led to questioning the boundaries of that identity and to refusing to take for granted traits that had seemed clear and defined. Translated into physical and vocal exercises, it explores the possibility of a deep personal transformation.

Just like Parsifal, who found the Holy Grail only after hearing the hermit Trevrizent describe him to himself, we can only discover who we are after having explored every side of it, including the most obscure ones.

The work grew out of Centomila e nessuno, Uno (2014) and the site-specific TO BE DEFINED – a self-portrait, created for Festival Aterteater in 2015.

• Nordic Fringe Award, Gothenburg Fringe Festival 2017
• Nominated for Innovation in Performance and Expect the Unexpected, Stockholm Fringe Festival 2017