Die Gerechten

It’s been decided: The Grand Duke must die. For a long time five young people have been preparing in the underground to assassinate the grand duke. They’ve decided to kill, in order to put an end to the state-led barbarism prevailing in the Russia of 1905. The assassination attempt fails, however, because one of them hesitates at the crucial moment. The moment when the enemy becomes a human being, the liberator a potential murderer.

On the one hand, Albert Camus’ existentialist classic The Just Assassins is a thrilling, political, criminal case based on a true story about Ivan Kalijayev, who, in the summer of 1905, assassinated the Grand Duke Sergei, uncle of the Czar, as part of a radical terrorist group belonging to the so-called »socialist revolutionaries«. On the other, Camus entangles his characters in a dialectic of ideological-critical justification and acceptance of personal guilt. With Camus’ depth of focus, the »just« of his piece are led before the tribunal of the audience and they must decide: Are they heroes whose courage makes the birth of another world possible? Or are they just blinded, caught up in the violence? Or can it be conceived and expressed that they are both at once?

Sebastian Baumgarten, known for translating complex theoretical questions into tactile stage language, searches with Camus through Russian history for a magnifier that makes the monday collisions of the »age of anger«, as the 21st century is called, tangible.

Watch the trailer

Premiere: September 29th, 2018

Photo: © Esra Rotthoff
Stage photos: © Ute Langkafel

Aufführungsrechte: Rowohlt Theater Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg