Salome

Shortly before the beginning of Christianity, Herod Antipas rules in Palestine as a tetrarch of the Roman occupation. His influence is dwindling, he’s facing the fate of being a political lame duck – pressure from Rome, pressure from the streets, or more precisely, from the desert, where a steadily increasing flock of fanatics is gathering around the radical John the Baptist. Herod throws a party to give himself some breathing room. But his desire for Salome keeps any kind of calm from reaching him, his court, or Salome in particular. She prefers to stay right outside the fortress. The desert promises emptiness and transparency, clarity and purity. Like an infection, these thoughts come over Salome and eventually the entire court. But instead of bringing order, fundamentalism ushers in the downfall. Thomaspeter Goergen’s text pulls single motifs out of Oscar Wilde’s template thus pushing the famous fin-de-siecle play into a dilemma of the present – perversion and fundamentalism as the destructive mixture of diffuse fear and real power. Ersan Mondtag stages this intensification in a visually stunning and sensually dark manner: »The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.« W. B. Yeats

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Premiere: December 1st, 2018

Photo: Esra Rotthoff
Stage photos: Birgit Hupfeld

Aufführungsrechte: schaefersphilippen™ Theater und Medien GbR