Ausverkauft | Der Schneesturm

In the organizer's words:

We open the 2025/26 theater season in the main auditorium of the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus on September 12, 2025 with "The Snowstorm" based on Vladimir Sorokin in a production by Kirill Serebrennikov. The production is a co-production of the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus with the Salzburg Festival and KIRILL & FRIENDS Company. The premiere will take place as part of the Salzburg Festival on August 16, 2025 in the large venue Perner-Insel.

"And suddenly, he realized that the journey had not ended happily and that something new was beginning."

When asked about his title, the author gives an answer that leads into the future. "I love the snow. The snow covers the earth and everything becomes beautiful. There are the distortions, all the contradictions of everyday life and then it snows and the world is beautiful," says Vladimir Sorokin in conversation about his novel, which, like Pushkin and Tolstoy, is entitled Метель (Snowstorm) and at first glance appears to be a condensation, an intertext of the Russian snowstorm tradition. "If you are traveling and get caught in a snowstorm, that's it. It's a beautiful phenomenon, but also a terrible, fateful event. My story actually has three protagonists: the doctor, his coachman and the blizzard. The third wins out in the end."

Like the beauty of the snow, the language of the 19th century in which Sorokin tells his story is also a deception. The clairvoyant visionary initially misleads us with reference space, personnel and narrative sound. The post-apocalyptic odyssey of the doctor Garin, who wants to bring a vaccine to a remote village where a mysterious plague is turning the inhabitants into zombies, is set in the future. On a retro-futuristic carriage ride through a white, vast land - nothing in sight but snow - readers and characters alike lose all sense of distance and time. They encounter grotesque figures, giants and dwarves, experience erotic escapades and drug-induced hallucinations. They are so terrible that the simple life seems worth living again. The journey loses sight of its destination, the catastrophe holds its breath and the mission remains unfulfilled.

The existential road novel comes to an end in the final encounter with the snowstorm. The novel's remarkable final punchline hints at something new to come, something that stretches our collective imagination: The half-frozen doctor and his dead coachman are found by Chinese, of all people. Chinese who collect everything that can be used, only to leave the place of failure to the endlessly falling snow. But where do they take their loot? And what follows the end of our familiar world?

When asked about his production, the director answers with a fragmentary list. "Snow. Little horses. A glass pyramid. The path. Infinity. Longing. Storm. Nothingness. Dream. Deception. Wind. Giants. Darkness. Doubt. Frozen time. A mistake. The lost world. Zombies. The vaccine. Destiny. Struggle. Death. A freezing cold room. Redemption?" The snowstorm is also the main character in Kirill Serebrennikov's production. It is polyphonic and mostly female. He leads and seduces. It scolds, dances, sings, remains silent and asks the final questions. He brings the all-embracing cold. And the sleep that one must not sleep. He leads us into the heart of brightness. Whiteout. The horizon disappears, earth and sky merge seamlessly. The familiar world, colors and shapes disappear, reference points, contrasts, contours dissolve. You find yourself in the middle of a completely empty, infinitely expansive white space and lose your balance.

Kirill Serebrennikov locates his production in this frenzy of absolute disorientation. An existential cabaret leads the audience into a loss of control.
Where is down, where is up?
Where should I go?
Why go on at all?
How will it end?
With death or salvation?
- Birgit Lengers

Vladimir Sorokin is considered one of the most important Russian prose writers of recent decades and one of the harshest critics of the Russian state and its war against Ukraine. The internationally renowned director and former artistic director of the Gogol Center in Moscow, Kirill Serebrennikov, has left Russia since the beginning of the war of aggression in Ukraine and lives in Germany. In 2023, he founded his theater company KIRILL & FRIENDS, based in Berlin.