Der Sturm / Das Dämmern der Welt

Prospero, the former Duke of Milan, is overthrown by adversaries working for his own brother and is forced into exile on an island. There, he encounters Caliban and Ariel, seizes their land and makes them his subjects. Seeking revenge, Prospero unleashes a devastating storm which strands his enemies on the island’s shores.

In-house director Jan-Christoph Gockel blends Shakespeare’s play with Werner Herzog’s new novel “Das Dämmern der Welt“ (“The Twilight World”) which recounts the story of the soldier Hiroo Onoda who continued to fight on an island for 29 years after World War II ended. Onoda believes that all reports of the war being over are fake. But one day – just as Prospero takes off his magic cloak – Onoda must return to a world that has lived on without him. Here, magic is the naked struggle to survive and maintain a mission which has long-since expired.

Jan-Christoph Gockel conjures up Shakespeare’s cyclical story of power, submission and resistance and Herzog’s literary monument to a senseless war in a spectacular aesthetic with puppets by Michael Pietsch.

“The truth is that the war never ended.”