Caitlin van der Maas has been working as a freelance director and writer for transdisciplinary contemporary music theatre, often with a local reference or for a specific location, in Munich since 2015. In 2015, she staged “Face Me”, a solo production with Sandra Hüller in an underground swimming pool. This was followed in 2016 by “Korridor”, a production about perceptual changes in mentally ill people at the LMU Clinic in Munich. In the same year, she won the 2nd Giesinger Culture Prize with “Shortlived”, a one-act opera about Alzheimer’s. Her libretto “Arianna, Ariadne, Ariane” won the competition at the Neuköllner Oper Berlin in 2018. In January 2020, her text and music theatre about agenda setting and the Hungarian uprising “Der Stille Dirigent” was performed at Kösk, Munich. Her production about cultural appropriation in pop music and online identity, ‘Karl im ALL zu Hause’, premiered in 2021 at the Neue Schwere Reiter, Munich.
As part of the Tour of the Text, Caitlin van der Maas wrote the play “Wo der Hund begraben liegt”.
Lucy moves to a small village in a forest shortly before her seventh birthday. Her father Henrik is bipolar and needs a quiet environment. Lucy’s mother Susanne works as the village doctor in the small community. Agneta, her moody neighbour, introduces herself as “Harry”. And Heiner, Lucy’s grandfather, disappears for two months without a trace. The dog, who is buried in the garden, keeps digging himself up. In five chapters, “Wo der Hund begraben lliegt” is a musical black comedy about Lucy and her relatives, their relationship to death and their experiences with it.
Photo credits: Andras Mezei Walke