CREATIVE TEAM

Author Valery Pecheykin

Set and costumes by Maria Tregubova

Composer Vladimir Rannev

Video Oleg Mikhailov

Lighting designer Damian Chmielarz

Choreographer Dina Khuseyn

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CAST

Marie Derkum Sophie Arbeiter

Hans Schnier Christoph Bornmüller

Leo Schnier, Herr Fredebeul Rocco Brück

Mutter Schnier Johanna Eiworth

Henriette Schnier Lorena Handschin (Schauspielstudio)

Vater Schnier, der Alte Boris Koneczny

Heribert Züpfner, Herr Kinkel, Kostert Robin Krakowski

Frau Fredebeul, Bela Brosen, Monika Silvs Viktoria Miknevich

Vater Derkum, Prälat Sommerwild, Zohnerer Patrick Schnicke

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Hans Schnier, a failed rebel and a touring clown, has maneuvered himself onto the sidelines. Half on principle, half out of spite, he drifts from one German hotel room to the next—better that than being an industrialist’s son and raising his children Catholic, as Marie, the love of his life, wanted. Schnier is the kind of man who can apparently tolerate happiness only as an outsider.

Heinrich Böll was one of the great intellectuals of postwar Germany, and “The Clown,” his reckoning with the conservative, churchy West Germany of the nineteen-fifties, was an international success. In Russia, where church and state are still closely entwined, Böll remains especially popular. What interests Didenko most is the clown’s view of reality: out of clowning—anarchic and truthful at once—he develops a new stage language that teeters between tragedy and comedy. “Through the Eyes of a Clown” was his first production in Germany.

In his opening-night review, Harald Raab wrote: “Böll’s story about the very real coercive society of the Adenauer-era Federal Republic comes across in Mannheim as a clownish caricature. The characters act in pantomime, with puppet-like, mechanical, at times almost dance-like movements—stereotyped, exaggerated types, lemurs of social mendacity. All of them submit to the discipline of the Catholic Church, to a system of bourgeois propriety imposed from above and meant to make people forget their rather active part in Nazi barbarism. Especially bold is the clown’s mother (Johanna Eiworth), who sacrificed her daughter for Führer, Volk, and Fatherland and now briskly presides over the Society for the Reconciliation of Racial Differences.

 

“Video and light (Oleg Mikhailov and Damian Chmielarz) are central to the hypnotic power of this adaptation. Whole scenes are flooded with dramatic image sequences. Patterns of color outline the action. Photographs of Hitler Youth marches turn blood-red. One sequence is especially oppressive: in an imagined orgy of lust-killing, the clown guns down his tormentors and films his dying victims with a handheld camera.”