1984

George Orwell’s legendary dystopian novel 1984 describes life in the totalitarian surveillance state: seamless control, a Thought Police that punishes every deviation, and the Party doctrine “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.” Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth and begins to secretly doubt the system. Together with Julia, he leads a forbidden double life that becomes an act of resistance, until the couple is betrayed, arrested and broken. In the end, Winston believes unconditionally in Big Brother.

Composer Rui Rodrigues and writer John von Düffel now bring Orwell’s nightmare world into the 21st century, together with the fourth-year students of the Musical/Show degree programme at Berlin University of the Arts. What remains is the struggle against a system that violently forces thought, language and reality into alignment. What changes is the perspective: identity, discrimination and the question of what is still real and what is not move to the centre of a generation that has grown up with precisely these struggles. The story is also retold in a new formal structure, as the seemingly impossible resistance unfolds in two parts, from two perspectives: Winston and Julia.

1984 is a stage piece in the tradition of the dark musical: dark and dystopian in its content and aesthetics, while being distinctly rooted in pop culture, as for example in Sweeney Todd. The fact that Orwell’s novel is once again regarded today as an acute warning makes it all the more urgent to renegotiate this material on stage, particularly with a young generation.

WITH Victoria Angerer, Noel Becker,Anastasia Dragoi, Mara Liede Gallego, Lara Kareen, Lukas Koch, Josephina Mackensen, Lennart Petersen

STAGE DIRECTION Mathias Noack MUSICAL DIRECTION Damian Omansen, Tobias Bartholmeß CHOREOGRAPHY Melissa King CHOREOGRAPHY ASSISTANCE Steffen Gerstle DRAMATURGY Olivia Schaaf COSTUME Cora Gessmann STAGE DESIGN Martin Gonschorek