PEER GYNT

In the organizer's words:

PEER GYNT

A dramatic poem by Henrik Ibsen

translated from the Norwegian by Angelika Gundlach

"Peer, you lie": with the very first sentence, Henrik Ibsen names the central theme of his dramatic poem - the blurred boundary between reality and appearance. Peer, whose youth is characterized by the poverty of the rural milieu, reinvents himself again and again with the help of storytelling, lies and the art of fabrication - as a cosmopolitan, colonial ruler and even emperor.

He leaves home behind, roams through a nature that is anything but idyllic, lands in the realm of the trolls, whose legendary magic seems to Peer to be just another form of rural pettiness, and sets off on journeys into the distance: for decades and always restlessly, he searches for his "Gyntian self" in adventures on the open sea, in the desert, in the world, which resembles "an army of wishes, lust, desire and craving, an ocean of fantasy". In his attempt to "be himself", Peer repeatedly changes identity - from intoxicated gold digger to unscrupulous human trafficker and finally to cynical prophet. He never manages to find his "real" self.

"Peer Gynt", that "Faust of the North", is a satirical, wild, immoderate, enigmatic, boundary-breaking masterpiece. In it, Ibsen tells the odyssey of an ego addict whose hubris persists into old age and even in the face of death, despite all his changes and transformations. The production is directed by Sebastian Baumgarten, one of the most prominent directors of his generation, whose visually powerful production of "Danton's Death" can still be seen in the repertoire.

"Egoism, narcissism and lies are revealed in as the source of a capitalist social system. We will examine why he encounters no resistance on his colonialist forays through the world and experiences no corrective." Sebastian Baumgarten

Artistic direction

Production Sebastian Baumgarten
Stage Lena Newton
Costumes Eleonore Carrière
Composition Marc Sinan
Collaboration Music Ilija Đorđević, Karsten Lipp
Lighting Gerrit Jurda
Video Philipp Haupt
Dramaturgy Constanze Kargl

Price information:

from 10 € for students