Schlingensief's Bayreuth

Last weekend we noted broke the story on the passing of Christoph Schlingensief. According to an article (Schlingensief's opera village in Burkina Faso faces uncertain future, August 24) by Marc Dugge for Deutsche Welle, the German bad-boy theater and opera director spent a lot of time in Africa, getting away from the stress of life in Berlin on a property in the savannah outside Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. In addition to using the site as a personal retreat, Schlingensief had plans to build what he called an "opera village," including a school for theater and music, a clinic, and among several performance spaces, an opera theater built to his specifications. Hmm, of whom does that remind us?

Family and friends of Schlingensief hope to continue with the project: they asked for donations to the fund for the Festspielhaus Afrika in lieu of flowers and other remembrances. See some images and brief history of the project in the video (in German) embedded below.