As the last premiere of this year, the Berlin Volksbühne at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz on December 30th will stage Gogol's "Dead Souls" on stage. The piece co-produced with the "Teatr Kreatur" is based on the eponymous novel Gogols. The production comes from Andrej Woron, head of the Teatr Kreatur, who also designed the stage and costumes. Gogol's novel tells the story of the Russian nobleman Chichikov, who buys deceased serfs, but who are still on the state tax lists, so that their owners must continue to pay taxes for them. (Source: Neues Deutschland)
Als letzte Premiere dieses Jahres bringt die Berliner Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz am 30. Dezember Gogols "Die toten Seelen" auf die Bühne. Das mit dem Teatr Kreatur koproduzierte Stück basiert auf dem gleichnamigen Roman Gogols. Die Inszenierung stammt von Andrej Woron, Leiter des Teatr Kreatur, der auch Bühne und Kostüme gestaltete.
Karl Grünberg was a German communist writer and journalist. His play "Golden fließt der Stahl", which premiered in 1950 at the Stadttheater Nordhausen and was particularly succsessful, works dramarturgically as a combination mystery thriller and socialist propaganda piece. At an important steel factory in the rebuilding GDR of 1949, an engeneer has disappeard, and his wife insists he did not defect to the West but rather was murdered; while solving the crime, she also discovers a saboteur, who is rehabilitated into society at the end of the play. (Source: Performing Unification)
"Zement" is a play by the German dramatist Heiner Müller, which was created in 1972 after the novel of the same name by Fjodor Gladkow. It tells a story of men and women, workers and intellectuals, communists and enemies of the revolution and their relationships to each other in the difficult years in the Soviet Union. The locksmith Gleb Tschumalow, returning from the war as regimental commissioner, finds his town transformed into a village, the cement plant into a goat stable, his wife into a man. The communist worker is still an owner as a man, the woman insists on equal rights.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a gothic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886. The work is also known as The Strange Case of Jekyll Hyde, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde. It is about a London legal practitioner named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll and the evil Edward Hyde.
Daniil Kharms was an early Soviet-era avant-gardist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist. His play "The plummeting old women" is an absurd story. Excessive curiosity made one old woman fall out of a window, plummet to the ground and break into pieces. Another old woman poked her head out of a window to look at the one who had broken into pieces, but excessive curiosity made her too fall out of the window, plummet to the ground and break into pieces. Then a third old woman fell out of a window, then a fourth, then a fifth.
Before the performance began, thirty drummers whirl their mallets in the foyer of the Berlin Volksbühne, so that the rebellious sound penetrated your body. Pimped up in his expectation, one can then enter a dark theater room, but is given a Chinese flashlight in his hand. This allows you to shine the actors who are beginning to act in the background of the hall out of the darkness. Director Andreas Kriegenburg, Castorf's supporter for a theater of contradiction, has come up with all sorts of ideas to make Lew Lunz's premiere of the political spectacle "City of Truth" effective.
The play by Ray Galton and John Antrobus is a hilarious farce from 1988. An extramarital affair turns into a nightmare when a thief pinches the husband’s trousers: Bookmaker Howard Swerling is married – and visiting his lover when a burglar steals his trousers. The hunt for spare trousers commences, leading to a sex-mad policeman’s proposal of marriage, drug parties and half-clad men and women – and from there straight into mayhem. And yet all Howard wants is to be home before his wife wakes up...