Das Totenfest

by Jean Genet

Schauspielhaus Hamburg

2019

DIRECTOR | Max Pross

STAGE | Mara-Madeleine Pieler

COSTUME | Clarissa Freiberg

SOUND | Raphael Andrade

DRAMATURGY | Finnja Denkewitz

with Paul Behren | Josef Ostendorf

PHOTOS | Erich Goldmann | Max Arntzen

Genet dedicates a literary requiem to his deceased lover Jean Decarnin. Decarnin was part of the resistance against the German occupiers and was mortally wounded during the liberation of Paris. The novel, described by critics as a "song to fascism", creates a fascinating, poetic fantasy in which numerous plot lines interweave. In the face of a friend who has fallen "on the field of honour", Genet breaks through political and social thought patterns. The controversial author explores the dimensions of his love and pain in the context of the omnipresent horror of war. The book is "an eager search for the scoundrels Decarnin despised". In a way that is both challenging and disturbing, Genet leads us to the murderers of the time and their humanity.