Bharati
Lucky Coincidence
By Tanya Kokoska

He will be the only, who speaks. Will tell of millenniums old myths and ritual, will report about the struggle between tradition and modern that is the country of India. And in between he will interlace cheerful anecdotes. He will provide the German public an understandign of the love story of the beautiful Bharati and Siddharta, which otherwise comes out without words. He will become the cue for an ensemble of hundred dancers, musicians and acrobats – and will even wear himself Indian costumes. He, Friedrich Karl Praetorius, will be Sutradhar - the narrator.

Actually they wanted to have an Indian actor for this roll in the Bharati-the specatcle in Germany, who speaks German well, Praetorius says, but they found none, as always. So a Dutchman stood there first of all on the stage who spoke with accent, that caused involuntary and strange comic scenes in this intoxication out of strange sounds, exotic colors and attractive dances.

Then the call of the organizer and the question came whether Praetorius did not want to get the roll. "I thought first, is that uch an Event-spectacle as a Shakira-concert,” he says Then he had looked at the show and had hesitated no longer. "It is as though India came to me after I went there so often. One can name it as the chance or fate. I feel the stroke of fate will be the best."

Friedrich Karl Praetorius, born in 1952 in Hamburg speaks about the Bharati as though a childe, that he once saw the story of Pinocchio played in a theater. At that time for a six year old, he tells , “I got the impossible for possible-that was a lovely feeling.”
He sits at the large wooden table in his working room, which he has decorated with Indian furnitures and accessory. Illuminated candles, they smell like green tea, and the CD-player plays pieces of the music, which will appear from tonight in 41 presentations in 14 cities. Now he learns his text, filled with the "Keywords", cues, that he must give in Indian language, so that he can make them understand others. Although he "hates" Frankfurt without naming a concrete reason for that, he remained like to the defiance in the vicinity of this city, bought itself 13 years ago a half-timbered house in Maintal-Hochstadt, lives there his woman and two children. Friedrich Karl Praetorius - actor, director, author and painter - wants to become here old, he likes the "province", the creaking of the halls, the large garden. And yet he pulls it often to India, "because one can experience adventure there " - and would be it a deader that lies between the waiting before the load ticket window.

This article appeared at http://www.fr-online.de/in_und_ausland/kultur_und_medien/feuilleton/?cnt=1039418