Peer Gynt

Peer Gynt is a storyteller and dreamer, a liar and a fantasist. On an adventurous journey through the world and his soul, which takes him from Gudbrandsdalen in Norway to remote deserts and back home again, he encounters countless people and legendary figures, but never himself.

Bernadette Sonnenbichler's production focuses on Peer Gynt as a vital man in his prime. When death visits him far too early and confronts him with his own mortality, he exerts all his willpower to escape the threatening reality. Using his imagination, Peer embarks on an existential journey into his own inner world and on a search for his true self. It is a long journey on which he constantly rediscovers himself in changing roles.

This Peer Gynt, played by Heiko Raulin, imagines himself as a reindeer hunter and bride robber, as an emperor and prophet, as an entrepreneur and troll prince. The other characters he encounters - the one with the crown, the royal messenger, the strange passenger, the green woman, the soul mate ... - all turn out to be variations, reflections and facets of Gynt's self. At the end of his life, Peer Gynt realizes that, like an onion, he has many layers but no core. He arrives at himself and in love.

Peer Gynt" is a climate-neutral production at the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus. This is a great adventure for the artistic team and all the employees involved in the production, as there are still no role models. The aim of the pilot project is to find creative, playful, imaginative and unexpected artistic solutions in collaboration with all departments and trades of the theater.