Meister und Margarita (The Master and Margarita)

Based on the novel by Michail Bulgakov
From the Russian by Alexander Nitzberg
Arranged for the stage by Claudia Bauer and Ensemble
The devil has come to town: He has installed himself in a bewitched flat on Sadovaya and wreaks havoc in Moscow with the help of the giant cat Behemoth and a host of other devilish companions. Decapitation, arson, black magic, kidnappings, utter chaos at the cabaret theatre, counterfeited currency – the list of their cunning deeds is long and they are aimed at the bureaucrats, the followers of the regime, the upright citizens. The authorities fail in their attempts to explain this horror and destruction.

Bulgakov’s social satire still has enormous political relevance today. It is set in the Stalinist Soviet Union, a dogmatically atheist surveillance state with a huge, despotic bureaucratic apparatus and ravaged with supply shortages. Apart from the fantastical characters surrounding the foreigner Voland, a “professor of black magic”, there is the Master – a broken man who has taken refuge in a lunatic asylum following the devastating reception of his novel about Pontius Pilate. And while the devil transports the Stalinist world into a state of unreality with his magical terror, the Master’s novel becomes part of the plot and takes on the role of established reality. The relationship between the work and the world goes into reverse: The work appears to be reality, the world becomes fiction.
While the neurasthenic Master succumbs to self-pity in the institution, his lover Margarita is ready to pledge herself to the devil and his magic if it helps her to find the disappeared Master and his poetic truth. At the end, the novel and the Pilate-novel within the novel converge. Jesus commands the devil to grant peace to the Master and Margarita. They are allotted a small house where they can enjoy their life in love.

“The Master and Margarita” is the most famous work by Russian author Michail Bulgakov and is considered a masterpiece of 20th century literature. All his life, Bulgakov suffered under Stalinist censorship. His numerous plays were banned and his most important prose work was only published in a censored version in 1966, 26 years after the author’s death.

After the Nordic Faust “Peer Gynt” and the German “Original Faust”, Schauspiel Leipzig will now present this Russian Faust-parody, staged by Director in Residence Claudia Bauer. Apart from world and German premieres at Diskothek like “Und dann” and “geister sind auch nur menschen”, she has also directed several plays for the Main Stage, including “König Ubu / Ubus Prozess”. Her Leipzig production of “89/90” was invited to the 2017 Berlin Theatertreffen.
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Premiere on March 07, 2020

Dates

https://www.schauspiel-leipzig.de Schauspiel Leipzig Bosestraße 1, 04109 Leipzig
Sat, 20.04. 19:30 — 22:00
for the last time!
Große Bühne

Duration

ca. 2:30, no break

Cast

Julia Preuß as Margarita
Julius Forster as Besdomny / Jeschua
Wenzel Banneyer as Pilatus / Bossoi
Tilo Krügel as Berlioz / Kaiphas / Lichodejew / Bengalski / Sokow
Dirk Lange as Woland / Strawinski / Afranius
Sonja Isemer as Korowjew
Roman Kanonik as Behemoth
Statisterie Meister und Margarita, Laura Lee, Paul Pötsch

Live-Music

Laura Lee, Paul Pötsch

Team

Director: Claudia Bauer
Stage Designer: Andreas Auerbach
Costume Design: Vanessa Rust
Music: Laura Lee, Christin Nichols, Paul Pötsch
Sounddesign: Paul Pötsch
Live-Camera: Kai Schadeberg
Video: Robert Gotthardt
Dramaturgy: Matthias Döpke
Light Design: Veit-Rüdiger Griess
Theatre pedagogy: Amelie Gohla

Trailer

Introduction