GESPENSTER

In the organizer's words:

by Henrik Ibsen

translated from the Norwegian by Heiner Gimmler

After a long absence, Osvald Alving returns to his parental home, where his mother, together with Pastor Manders, plans to open an orphanage in memory of her deceased husband. The son's homecoming brings the memory of the dead back into the Alvings' house twice over; the ghosts of the past break free and cause Mrs. Alving, ten years after her husband's funeral, to finally break her silence. But even her version of family history is only part of the truth and cannot prevent the family edifice of lies from literally going up in flames in the end.

Ibsen's abysmal play GESPENSTER is originally called "Wiedergänger" (from the Norwegian "Gengangere"). The family drama tells of the unspoken and the unconscious, of the repressed and the unintentionally inherited. Written in 1881, the characters in Ibsen's play are living revenants and bear witness to what is now referred to as intergenerational trauma. Following his last production IF WE HAVE Sufficiently Tormented, director Thomas Jonigk now turns his attention to the power of ghosts that endure for generations and centuries with Ibsen's chamber play.

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