DIE RÄUBER

About the show

The world is in turmoil. Not only are the harbingers of the French Revolution shaking society with class struggles and violence, but the family order of the old Earl of Moor is also threatening to collapse. Franz, the second-born son, feels cheated of his father's favor and wants revenge. He devises a plot against his older, favored brother Karl, who is then disowned by his father. Hurt by his father's rejection, Karl joins a band of robbers to fight against injustice in society. While Karl fights for individual freedom and emancipation from the tyrannical state, Franz reveals the dark side of his lust for power. The situation spirals out of control, and the struggle for individual freedom becomes the spark that ignites a relentless campaign of destruction. Hatred, self-centeredness, and unbridled violence take hold. When Schiller's play Die Räuber (The Robbers) premiered at the National Theater in Mannheim on January 13, 1782, the audience was electrified. Schiller's new stage tone was fast-paced, eloquent, and irreverent. "The theater resembled a madhouse, with rolling eyes, clenched fists, stamping feet, and hoarse cries in the auditorium! Strangers fell into each other's arms, sobbing. Women staggered toward the door, close to fainting. It was a general dissolution, like chaos, from whose mists a new creation burst forth!" At the DT, director Claudia Bossard had already explored the connection between family and violence in the bourgeois milieu in her acclaimed premiere of Rainald Goetz's Baracke. By reading Schiller's famous classic as a historical document of the mentality of the time, she continues her examination of German bourgeois society and explores the interplay of art, ethics, and politics in the terror of the family fortress.