Young Directors Project
Jon Fosse The Burial at Thebes

In a German translation by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel
First performance in German
In German with English surtitles

A coproduction of the Salzburg Festival, Centraltheater Leipzig, Kampnagel Hamburg and HAU (Hebbel am Ufer)
 
Kindly supported by the Office for Culture, Sports and Media Hamburg, the Hamburg Cultural Foundation, the Ilse and Dr. Horst Rusch Foundation, the Mara and Holger Cassens Foundation, the Rudolf Augstein Foundation and the ZEIT Foundation

CREATIVE TEAM

Angela Richter, Stage Director
Katrin Brack, Set Design
Steffi Bruhn, Costume design
Brigitta Pöcksteiner, Knitted objects
Jens Dietrich, Dramaturgy
Dirk von Lowtzow / Tocotronic, Music
Philipp Haupt, Video
Carsten Sander, Lighting
Andrea Tietz, Production/Management

CAST

Yuri Englert, Oedipus, Haemon
Sarah Franke, Ismene, Messenger, Guard
Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, Old man
Eva Löbau, Tiresias, Antigone, The Shepherd
Ingolf Müller-Beck, Creon
Oana Solomon, Jocasta
Christoph Theußl, Chorus, Polyneices

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

Is there such a thing as individual liberty? Is it Oedipus’ fault that he murders his father and marries his mother? In this version by the Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse, Sophocles’ three great tragedies about the rise and fall of King Oedipus, his exile on Colonus and the tragic fate of his daughter Antigone are turned into one single play, extremely reduced and of the highest emotional density. It is the mother of all family dramas, and a play about guilt, silence and loneliness. Thus, The Burial at Thebes reveals an intriguing kinship of souls between two authors who may be separated by two millennia, but who are united in their thoughts about the inescapability of history. Can this scandal-steeped play still teach us something about suffering?
In her production, Angela Richter gives the protagonists from Antiquity the greatest possible space, placing them within a light installation in which they can disappear in the darkness or come into dazzling focus – thus, they are swept from a dark foreboding into the sober certainty of catastrophe. The inevitability of the mythical sequence of events forces the figures to take position and to search for spaces in which they can be themselves.


A production of Angela Richter, Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg and the Salzburg Festival

Supported by the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs and the Ilse and Dr. Horst Rusch Foundation Hamburg