PRESS.  

"'Botany 101 with "Plantkingdom" at the Platzprojekt'

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HANOVER. It's not easy being green. Who could ding that more authentically than Kermit the Frog from the Muppet Show. "It's not easy bein' green" resounds across the courtyard of the Platzprojekt in Linden. And the interpreters of the song are not dealing with fauna representatives of show business, but with the plant world. In Rebecca Jungahns' and Ronja Donath's musical-lyrical program "Salon des Plantes", flowery poetry meets botanical 101. It is the sixth part of the Theater an der Glocksee's "Plantkingdom - Foreign Worlds" annual project. Two armchairs with a small table make up the small open-air living room in which the artists read and play accentuated by well-founded plant facts and songs of praise for photosynthesis. A moving image excursion to a city near Chernobyl shows house complexes that have been reclaimed by nature, almost swallowed up by greenery, streets that have become green rivers. Heart-warming and no less esoteric sound bites from plant enthusiasts always lead to a new mental flowerbed. [...] 'The Neverending Story' and "The Little Prince' are the rosebushes of literary quotations [...]. Compliments and rejections - so completely through the flower - are then offered in the "Floriography", in which the artists prepare the curious language of flowers with coded flirtations. [...]"

  

NEUE PRESSE, 19.09.20, Aline Westphal

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"[...] Short songs, little texts, big impact: that's the "Salon des Plantes". Melodious, lyrical, curious, scientific and always worth knowing thrive on the corona-related outdoors stage at Ladenburg's "KulturWerkstatt am Sägewerk". It's all about the secret life of plants. 

Rebecca Junghans and Ronja Donath let their programme blossom with wit and original arrangements on a balmy late summer evening [...]. "We want to rediscover the kingdom of flora with you", say the duo. Junghans [...] hints at the fact that our much older fellow inhabitants on this planet are having an increasingly difficult time with us, even tough everyone likes plants, in the opening song against the backdrop of the industrial estate: "It's not easy being green" [...] by Kermit the frog from "Sesame Street"[...]."

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MANNHEIMER MORGEN, 21.09.20, Peter Jaschke

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"Botanical expedition through text and singing. 
[...] Rebecca Junghans and Ronja Donath inspire with their own production "Salon des Plantes."

LADENBURG: "The greener it is around me, the better I feel", and one develops an "almost frighteningly close bond" with plants. [...] "Original and versatile" was ultimately an enthusiastic opinion from the audience, and rightly so, as the two performers had brought along a harmonious potpourri of texts, poetry and song. The program was thematically interesting and insightful, at times almost philosophical: "The task of every person is to bring their own life to full bloom." Scientific findings also flowed into the parlour, which was filled with plants, instruments, teapots and teacups as well as many, many books. Speaking of which: the phrase "saying something through a flower" is well known, and everyone knows that red roses are the ultimate sign of love. But not that it was the Englisch writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who popularised this "flower language" in Europe after she made corresponding observations in Istanbul [...] and in England at the beginning of the 18th century. That Victorian language of flowers gave rise to entire dictionaries. The crocus, for example, stands for "I'll have to think about it", while the burdock sets boundaries: "You're too clingy for me." And even the number of flowers in a bouquet or the way they are titled when presented are not without meaning. 

The actresses explained that communication also takes place between plants using the example of acacias, which warn their plant colleagues of hungry enemies by emitting ethylene, whereupon the plants release a tannin that makes them inedible. 

Another supporting and unifying focus of the evening was the music - the guests enjoyed great arrangements of well-known composers, which the two artists [...] performed, sometimes solo, sometimes in perfect two-part harmony. The intense piece "Believer", for example, will remain a lasting memory for many. [...]

The guests thanked the creative dup with long-lasting applause and were not sparing in their praise [...]. The material was extraordinary: "You don't get something like this every day" [...]. The very beautiful voices, the interplay, the versatility, the selected texts and also the interludes: "It was a well-rounded affair."

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LADENBURGER ZEITUNG, 21.09.2020, Silke Beckmann

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