Presse – Titus Andronicus

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Shakespeare is a mirror through the ages, our hope a world he no longer reflects: "We have not arrived at ourselves as long as Shakespeare writes our plays." That's a Heiner Müller quote, and very much as he wrote it, so it says at the end of this play yesterday, which Jan Philipp Stange staged and which, apart from a few lengths, I was really fascinated by. This already started with the stage design. As a suction in the depth stood there immediately, as soon as one entered the room, a large, slightly open and blood-red mouth, which could just as well have been a hell mouth. Likewise, another aspect will stay in my mind for a long time because it really was of such a kind of cruel-surreal beauty. It also reminded me a bit of the painter Paul Delvaux: after the rape and mutilation of Lavinia, you see the maltreated woman standing at the front of the stage, from the rear view, and further into the depths of the room, directly in front of the now really bloody glowing mouth stands what we know as the remnants of a great culture, namely Roman statues with severed arms. This gets a completely different meaning, there is then much more in it than what one actually believes to see: There are namely cruelty and beauty, cruelty and civilization very close together.



"The stage design triggered the initial fascination for me. I also found many parts of the performance fascinating. For example, in the portrayal of Lavinia, there is a very strong scene (...) that has an incredible intensity. What I also found pleasantly irritating was that Lavinia spoke her lines in English. I was thrilled by the ability of these young artists, who do not yet have as much experience as seasoned older theater actors, whether it was Titus, his brother Markus, the Queen of the Goths, their sons: I found this ability of expression, dance, speech and interpretation remarkable."
(Birgit Spielmann, HR2, 24.10.2014)

Titus Andronicus, 2014 studioNAXOS Frankfurt

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An incredible intensity - I was thrilled.

(HR Early Critics)

When he closes his eyes, he sees the city.
The steppe looks out of him when he opens them.

Great Rome, cradle of our world: Titus Andronicus returns from the war against the foreign Goths. The prisoners are fed to the civilization machine Rome, because the empire, built on the dead, is to continue. But the Goths do not want to go down so easily. Towering over Shakespeare's most brutal of revenge tragedies as an 'incurable wound' is Lavinia, the raped daughter of Titus, her tongue and arms cut off. She is the doubly incapacitated, pointing Rome to nowhere.

With Shakespeare's grotesque - widely known as his worst play - and Heiner Müller's ANATOMY TITUS, we dare to look at the cruel foundation of our civilization. Is every act of culture also always one of barbarism? At the threshold between dance and theater, waking and dreaming, human and animal, glass eyes look at us, which are perhaps our own.

Premiere on October 23, 2014 at studioNAXOS Frankfurt, further performances on October 24 and 25, 2014.

Acting: Johanna Franke, Lili Ullrich, Oliver Lau; Tanz: Orla McCarthy, Finn Lakeberg, Max Schumacher; Musik: Carlo Eisenmann, Jakob Fritz; Regie: Jan Philipp Stange; Bühne: Laura Robert; Dramaturgie: Björn Fischer; Komposition: Richard Millig; Kostüm: Juliana Cuellar Parra; Ausstattung: Anja Schäfer, Wiebke Schmitt; Organizational assistance Direction: Baris Akman

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