TITUS ANDRONICUS

About the show

The "dumbest play ever written" or the most outlandish: 17 murders, a handful of perfectly executed mutilations, a linguistically sophisticated rape of a girl's body, Ovidian quotations, sinister intrigue, courtly wit, dripping cynicism, sublime politics and swordplay, black and white and a crude mixture, late Roman decadence and barbarity—all this, and hardly more, is stirred up by Shakespeare's early and most controversial tragedy. The dust of centuries over this play dissipates at the first synopsis, and since Heiner Müller's adaptation ANATOMY TITUS FALL OF ROME, at the very latest, it's conceivable what Müller prefaces his SHAKESPEARE COMMENTARY with: "Humanity's / Veins slashed open like a book / Turning the pages in the stream of blood." Stream of blood and dust form the muddy humus for one of the most magnificent plots in the history of theater. In a compact production, the tragedy is dissected in a confined space. The basis is Johann Joachim Eschenburg's translation, who in 1778 became the first German-language translator to bring Shakespeare's complete works to the German-speaking world. This approach to the new dramatic continent blends humility and astonishment, rawness and purity, baroque exuberance and diligent interpretation with the fury of the original. It elevates the material to an aesthetic level rarely seen on German stages. Ideal conditions for the students' boundless enthusiasm to test and grapple with their performances.