Being a revolutionary is an uplifting affair. One feels important. One is serving a greater good. One can become a martyr to this, for the good of the collective. It is a great, a perverted pleasure. Osama bin Laden knows what we’re talking about. Two protagonists from the history of German theatre enjoy the opportunity to be shot out of political necessity and to sacrifice themselves for the progress of humanity – the “Young Comrade” in Brecht’s teaching play “Die Maßnahme”, written in 1930, and “A” in Heiner Müller’s critique of a teaching play “Mauser”, written 40 years later and immediately banned in the GDR.
Brecht’s passion play from the cabinet of horrors of totalitarianism celebrates the joy of putting a cause above oneself. In Heiner Müller’s play, the suffering is endless. The revolutionaries are squelched by their cause and endure – like Prometheus bound to the rocks.
How are things today? How does Hanns Eisler’s music for the worker’s choir sound to our ears? And what if this world of dashing clarity and of inner turmoil and of pithy agony is penetrated by the private, by the western individualism with its proneness to gambling? Where are the heroes gone, where is the pleasure of death?
With: Hermann Beyer, Sebastian König, Christoph Letkowski, Trystan Pütter, Jeanette Spassova, Andreas Barth (Sänger), Frank Bauszus (Sänger), Winnie Böwe (Sängerin) and Anna Charim (Sängerin)
Choir: Volksbühnen-Chor
Orchestra: stefanpaul, Patricia Gerstenberger, Arnaud Morel, Nathan Plante, Damir Bacikin, Christian Ahrens, Wolfgang Dunst, Martin Curth, Viorel Chiriacescu, Fabian Musick
Director: Frank Castorf
Stage Designer: Thiago Bortolozzo
Costumes: Arianne Vitale
Rehearsals: Marcus Crome
Light Design: Torsten König
Video: Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull
