deutsche märchen (UA)

Once upon a time, there was a great wealth of fantastical stories. They were told everywhere people came together. They told of urgent problems or grand desires, they were peopled by pious minds and cunning fellows, by monumental castles, dark forests and talking animals. Tables would lay themselves to provide sumptuous feasts or an entire country and all its people would fall into a hundred years of sleeping.

Depending on who told a story, and for whom, they would sound a little different every time. One narrator might have wanted them to be a warning against unchaste behaviour, someone else wanted to prove themselves to be an master-storyteller. Which means that presumably nobody heard the same fairytale twice. At least while they were only handed down in narration.

At one time, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm gathered many of these stories, creating the German collection of fairytales. They became a common horizon of imagery, not just for children. At the same time, these so-called “children’s and house tales” were only one single version of these stories: For example, a mother who abandoned her children might be turned into a stepmother, simply because this was less damaging to the Biedermeier-period’s image of the family.

At another time, the fairytale characters made their way to the big screen. Cinderella even went on several cinematic journeys: On one of them, she was suddenly given magic hazelnuts, even though they called her Aschenbrödel. And when Walt Disney animated her, she was saved not by doves but by a whole army of singing, talking and dancing mice. Add to this a glass slipper, three Oscar-nominations, her very own Barbie-edition as well as a whole host of other Cinderella-merchandise.
And at yet another time, there was an author who felt that his country had fallen into a seemingly eternal sleep while there was political and social turmoil everywhere. From this, he created “Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen”. Many more winters had passed by when “Deutschland, ein Sommermärchen was baked – even though, in the end, the golden chalice, or rather, cup travelled on to Italy. And fairytales still live on happily ever after. With or without a spindle, they are still spun today, and some even try to trim them into the common thread of national ideas. Continually, they are transformed from being one version of the story into becoming the core of the one identity.

Thomas Köck, one of the most distinctive voices of German contemporary drama, returns to Schauspiel Leipzig following “vendetta vendetta”, his most recent work there. With “deutsche märchen”, he turns to this supposedly timeless cultural asset, attempting to reflect them in our present times, to perhaps populate a new forest with them. Maybe the big bad wolf is granted three wishes. Or Cinderella has her first stint in a talk show to reconcile with her sisters or perhaps the Frog Prince finally gets to tell his side of the story. Or something completely different. As long as: All’s well that ends well…

This world-premiere production will be directed by Elsa-Sophie Jach, making it her fourth work for the Leipzig audience.