© Armin Smailovic Julia Gräfner und Ensemble

Der Auftrag / Psyche 17

BY Heiner Müller / BY Elemawusi Agbédjidji DIRECTED BY Jan-Christoph Gockel
FROM THE FRENCH VERSION BY Annette Bühler-Dietrich

  • DT Bühne

synopsis

  • puppets
  • masks
  • elevator

As part of a secret mission, the French Revolution is to be extended across to the slave owner colony of Jamaica. Three emissaries are on their way to cast liberty, equality and fraternity into the world as a “firebrand of freedom”. But the export of European values fails. And not just because the characters have not outgrown their old roles, but also because the newly minted values don’t even succeed in Europe itself: Napoleon has crowned himself Emperor.

Heiner Müller, the great East German author and eloquent creator of historical metaphors, always searching the past for traces of his present times, created an act of poetical mourning in his play  Der Auftrag (The Mission) from 1980, describing the failure of a Utopian idea. And what about today? The European sense of mission is badly dented but seems unable to come to wind itself up, as seen in in West Africa, for instance. Marshall and master plans continue to be outlined in European capitals. But which kind of missions would really serve to develop a fair and collective future?

While Heiner Müller ends with a grand metaphoric declaration of bankruptcy, director Jan-Christoph Gockel, who has been working with artists from the African continent for many years, will join the Togolese author Elemawusi Agbédjidji to find a new narrative.  43 years after Müller, Agbédjidji writes a contemporary annotation to Müller’s Mann im Fahrstuhl (Man in the Lift), a character who holds a dreamlike monologue as a kind of mysterious insert in Der Auftrag. Agbédjidji asks how an abandoned lift – an old technology that contributed to the manifestation of hierarchies – might be used in future.

Update: Until further notice, Isabelle Redfern will be taking over Mercy Dorcas Otieno's performances. Redfern also speaks the voice of "Psyche 17".

The Skullie masks and full body suits were made by Claude Bwendua for Deutsches Theater Berlin.
The Skullies were invented and developed by Andy Freer /
Snuff Puppets
Design and fabrication costume Otieno: Adeju Thompson

premiere

28.10.2023

notes

recommended from grade 10

cast and creative

trailer

Termine → Der Auftrag / Psyche 17

no matching events