Bühne Cipolla - Der Untergang des Hauses Usher

In the organizer's words:

"I really do believe that the house and the whole surrounding area are suffused with a peculiar atmosphere."

Roderick Usher, the terminally ill last scion of a degenerate noble family, asks his friend from his student days to keep him company to make his illness more bearable. Driven by curiosity and dark forebodings, the friend arrives at House Usher, a run-down, lonely estate where Roderick is joined by a few taciturn servants and the host's twin sister, who is also wasting away.

Shortly after the friend's arrival, Lady Magdalena Usher dies and is laid out in the cellar of the house. But this is only the beginning of a series of strange events. While a storm howls outside, the insomnia-stricken friends try to cheer each other up: they sing, read, paint and make music together and try in every possible way to fill the gloomy walls with life.

In his short story, first published in 1839, the American author Edgar Allan Poe uses his typical mixture of grotesque situations, subtle horror and suspenseful cascades of language to tell of primal human fears and the battle of the mind against dark impulses, but also reflects on friendship, empathy and love beyond death in a tenderly poetic way.

Based on the short story by Edgar Allen Poe
Puppet theater with live music
A production by Bühne Cipolla
in cooperation with Theater Duisburg, Metropol Ensemble and Schaulust e.V.

Recitation, puppetry, make-up, stage, direction: Sebastian Kautz
Violoncello, keyboards, composition, sound design: Gero John
Drawings and puppet construction: Melanie Kuhl
Technical equipment and lighting design: Frank Barufke