Franziska

In the organizer's words:

Franziska - A Modern Mystery - by Frank Wedekind - Premiere on October 8, 2022 - Schauspielhaus, Großes Haus - Drama

Get married and have children? Franziska is bored with the prospects offered to her by her mother and a male-dominated society. Then Veit Kunz, "Sternenlenker" from Berlin, comes just in time for her. The windy agent offers the young woman a devil's pact: entry into the spheres of power, hedonism and avant-garde art. And because Wedekind's protagonist demands more "than a woman can experience in pleasures," Veit makes the world believe for two years that Franziska is a man. Motionless and pleasure-loving, glamorous and hungry for life, her star rises between heaven and hell. But the end of the term is approaching, and the soul of the new superstar threatens to fall to Mephisto Veit Kunz.
Inspired by the female artists of the Munich bohemian scene, Frank Wedekind tries his hand at creating a female "Faust" in 1913. In the process, the author's thoughts quickly exceed the original goal: his drama about the liberation of a woman turns into a reflection on the possibility of creating a new, elastic human being. "The will to live is rigid," Wedekind observes, "therefore the New Man must be able to bend in the storm of life without having to bend himself, so that like a blade of grass lying on the ground he can rise again unharmed." - The production is directed by Sebastian Baumgarten, who has been one of the most consistent and distinguished theater and opera directors for twenty years. The stage is designed by the Dutch object artist Joep van Lieshout, whose work is located between art, craft, architecture, design and survival art.