SCHROFFENSTEIN: IN GRUND UND BODEN

A punk opera based on Kleist by glanz&krawall

With Heinrich von Kleist's eerie first work Die Familie Schroffenstein, glanz&krawall take on the last sanctuary of the FRG: inheritance. It stabilizes the family and the promise of achievement, the toxic cornerstones of our society. It's high time to use punk to break the bonds that have cemented inequality for centuries! glanz&krawall and composer Sarah Taylor Ellis rewrite Kleist's word acrobatics and, for the first time, turn a classic play into an opera, building a bridge from feudalism in 1800 to neo-feudalism in 2025.

In the punk opera, two clan families fight over an inheritance that can only be obtained by wiping out the other. Until the parents finally kill their own children, who were trying to overcome this senseless family feud. The historic hall becomes a stage in which floor slabs and turf are laid and fences erected with an excavator and concrete mixer. Arias alternate with recitatives and speech scenes; the desire for revenge, rants and bourgeois vested interests are spit out, spat out in a cultivated manner and discarded. In the garden paradise, deadly intrigues unfold, the upper middle-class façade topples and the grimace of the late capitalist present is revealed, in which nobody gives each other a damn.

Performance dates 16.+17.05, 24.+25.05. with English surtitles. / After the performance on 16.05. there will be an audience discussion by Theaterscoutings.

glanz&krawall are a Berlin-based music theater group led by director Marielle Sterra and dramaturge Dennis Depta. In their interdisciplinary musical theater, they have been blithely seeking confrontation with the rest of society since 2014 - from the high culture of opera to the poetic forlornness of a solo entertainer in the village disco. Sterra and Depta bring formats such as wrestling, circus, punk concerts or harness racing into theater spaces and bring their theater into the urban space, e.g. into clubs, lidos or psychiatric wards. glanz&krawall work across generations with professionals and amateurs. Their play texts are created during the rehearsal process together with the performers.

www.glanzundkrawall.de