Persona

In the translation by Renate Bleibtreu

In 1965, the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman was hospitalised with pneumonia. In his hospital room, he came up with the screenplay for his experimental feature film Persona. Later, he said that parts of the film corresponded to a "poem about his personal situation". He felt "burnt out, as if dead", and thought he could never create anything ever again. In the screenplay, the nurse Alma is assigned to care for the acclaimed actress Elisabeth Vogler. She has stopped speaking after a performance of Elektra. In a house by the sea, the two very different women spend a carefree summer. Alma speaks. Elisabeth listens. When Alma finds a letter in which Elisabeth makes fun of her, the situation spirals out of control. Persona is more than just a tale about depression or exhaustion. Rather, at its core, the material is based on a profound scepticism about the construction of human identity. Both women similarly pose these questions and merge into one other. In Anna Bergmann’s production, this concept is reflected in an extraordinary way: the two actresses who play these female characters will change roles in the course of the Malmö–Berlin co-production, swapping roles when they perform in the other country and theatre.

Co-production with the Malmö Stadsteater