From Sunday, 1 August 2021, plays will once again be performed in the open air in front of and behind the Deutsches Theater on the specially constructed outdoor venues. “Die Pest” based on the novel by Albert Camus, “Tartuffe oder Das Schwein der Weisen” by PeterLicht freely adapted from Molière and “Gaia googelt nicht” by Nele Stuhler will be presented.
Die Pest
“Rieux knew that the plague bacillus never dies and never goes away, and that perhaps the day would come when the plague would wake its rats and send them to die in a happy city.”
A strange epidemic breaks out in the Algerian coastal city of Oran. Doctor Bernard Rieux suspects what everyone else thinks is impossible: It is the plague. A state of emergency is declared, the city is hermetically sealed off, all connections to the outside world are cut off. Soon the disease claims more and more victims, gigantic hospital wards are built, later mass graves. The doctor knows that his fight against the epidemic is hopeless. The bacillus remains invincible, even though the plague leaves Oran after nine months as abruptly as it came. Albert Camus’ world-famous novel asks about the possibility of human action in the face of catastrophe. Written during the Second World War, it is regarded as an image of the Résistance’s struggle against the occupation of France as well as a timeless examination of the metaphysical problem of evil. In a version by András Dömötör and Enikő Deés. Directed by András Dömötör.
Dates: 1./2./3./5./6./7. August 2021, each 8:30 to 9:45 pm
Tartuffe oder Das Schwein der Weisen
Orgon owns the whole place. And they all dance in his sunlight: his wife Elmire, his two children Damis and Mariane, brother-in-law Cléante, his father-mother Mr. Mrs. Pernelle and maid Dorine. Everything is fine so far. Until Orgon, called Orgi, gets into a crisis, reflects on his okay life and realises that he doesn’t get close to anything or anyone, that he always stands at a distance from things and people: “You meet everything in the middle.” As much as he appreciates this mediocrity of his way of life, he also senses an elemental lack in this world, at the edges of which it begins to flicker frighteningly. Orgon longs for change: “I would love to grasp or be grasped by anything.” A new world where all the splendour can be discovered and the full charge felt, where one does not merely exist but can believe in something else – that would be it! Because: “The way things are, that’s not enough!” Then the saviour Tartuffe, called Tüffi, comes to him as if on cue and Orgi makes a plan to transfer himself and his social reference group from the Okay realm to the Tüffi realm. Tüffi’s sun jungle is about community, love, work, inner peace, supersexuality and, of course, wholeness. In the Tüffi temple you have to want and feel, you have to be free and put yourself out there, you just have to be there and completely inside. Direct action! Take a deep breath!
The musician and author PeterLicht has brought Molière’s Tartuffe into today and shows a maximally accelerated society that patriarchal turbo-capitalism has thrown out of its orbit and that is striving for spectacle, performance and authenticity. Other longings are there, but the ways and means are missing. Where is a utopia? How does the future go? Hold on to what? Connect with what? What world tomorrow? Until insights are gained and answers found, one thing above all helps: talk a lot! And: always be one step faster than the depression!
In the caesura of the Corona Crisis and as part of the DT Open Air in the summer of 2021, director Jan Bosse and ensemble perform this comedy on the forecourt of the Deutsches Theater.
Dates: 15./16./17./18./21./22./23./24./26./27. August 2021, each 8:00 to 9:45 pm
Gaia googelt nicht
Nele Stuhler’s new play is a journey to the beginning of the world. There, at the origin of all things, stands Gaia. She is the creator of the world. But she also creates all other things: the heavens, the moon, the air, chaos, the sun, love, the universe, time. It’s exhausting. And sometimes complicated. After all, she is doing all this for the first time. The cycle of creation then also becomes a little monotonous. After the hundred and first mountain range. That only changes when Gaia creates the phallus. More out of misfortune. Then creation divides into She and He, Urana becomes Uranos, the single creator becomes the sleeper and the bearer. And the course of the world changes.
Nele Stuhler has dealt with the Gaia myth several times as part of the Autor:innentheatertage. In the past two festival years, two of her Gaia texts were presented in readings, first at the Deutsches Theater and then at the Kammerspiele. The world premiere of Gaia doesn’t google on the open-air stage in the inner courtyard of the Deutsches Theater continues this collaboration. And presents a play that, as a comedy out of nonsense, asks questions that are pressing and point from ancient myths into today. Why is the world built the way it is? Where did the crisis begin and where does it end? Directed by Sarah Kurze.
Dates: 17./18./21./22. August 2021, each 7:30 to 9:00 pm
WHERE? Deutsches Theater, Schumannstraße 13a, 10117 Berlin-Mitte
Tickets: +49 30 28441225
