DEATH OF A SALESMAN
| Author: | Arthur Miller |
| Director: | Luk Perceval |
| Dramaturgy: | Maja Zade |
| Stage design: | Katrin Brack |
| Costume design: | Ilse Vandenbussche |
| Lighting Design: | Marc Van Denesse |
| Performed by: | |
| Thomas Thieme | WILLY LOMAN |
| Carola Regnier | LINDA LOMAN |
| Bruno Cathomas | BIFF LOMAN |
| André Szymanski | HAPPY LOMAN |
| Ulrich Hoppe | BERNARD |
| Christina Geiße | THE WOMAN |
| Michael Rastl | CHARLEY |
| Marcus Schinkel | UNCLE BEN |
| Christian Schmidt | HOWARD WAGNER |
Performance time: 110 minutes. No intermission.
About the director:
Luk Perceval is an actor, director, and Artistic Director of “Het Toneelhuis”, which he founded in 1998 in Antwerp. There, among other works he directed the Shakespeare Marathon “Ten oorlog” (the German-language version was premiered at the Salzburger Festpiele under the title “Schlachten!” and was presented at the Theatertreffen Berlin in 2000). His work in Germany includes: Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” (schauspielhannover), “Traum im Herbst” by Jon Fosse (Munich Chamber Theater, presented at Theatertreffen Berlin, 2002), and Shakespeare’s “Othello” in an adaptation by Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel (Munich Chamber Theater). In opera he has directed: “Tristan and Isolde” (Staatsoper Stuttgart), “VEC Markopolous” (Staatsoper Hannover) and the Vespers of Mary (Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin). In early 2006, he became a house director at the Schaubühne.
For more information visit Luk Perceval's home page.
Staged at the Schaubühne Theatre:
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The Schaubühne Berlin stands for contemporary, experimental and international theater work. It was established in 1962, and ever since, it has been the place where renowned directors make the history of German theatre - first at the Hallesches Ufer, and now at the theater’s current home at Lehniner Platz.
Numerous international tours, awards and honors for directors, productions and the ensemble all provide impressive testimony to the enormous success of the current artistic team under Thomas Ostermeier and Jens Hillje, in further developing the reputation of the Schaubühne (most recently Katharina Schüttler was voted Actress of the Year for 2006 for the role of Hedda in “Hedda Gabler”). No other German theater is present on the international scene in a comparable manner.
With Thomas Ostermeier and resident directors Luk Perceval and Falk Richter, the Schaubühne continues its tradition of contemporary and critical interpretations of classic works from Molière and Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekhov, to Bertolt Brecht and Arthur Miller. A further core of the company’s repertory is the work of living authors: over 50 World Premieres testify to this, as do the annual Drama Competition for young and emerging playwrights, and the Festival for International New Drama (F.I.N.D.), during which new work from Germany and abroad is presented over the course of one week each year.
About the production:Willy Loman, who has been a traveling salesman for 36 years, is done with. His loyal customers have moved away or died off, the sales techniques of his younger colleagues are more profitable than his, and the endless driving his job requires has become torture. In his personal life there is no escape either: his children, long since adults, are lazy failures. His eldest son Biff, a promising football talent as a teenager, dreams of a restful life on a ranch and refuses to follow his father into business. Happy, the younger son, is a gainfully employed opportunist who continues desperately to vie for his parents’ attention, and who is continually entangled with various women. When Willy is fired by a new, young boss, he slides into an existential crisis. He sees only one way out of the hopelessness he finds in the heartless capitalist system: a suicide disguised as a car accident, enabling his family to start life anew with his life insurance funds.
»Death of a Salesman,« first performed in New York City in 1949, illustrates the last hours in the life of Willy Loman, during which his depression and desperation are intercut with flashbacks of a happy past full of hope and expectation. Miller’s most well-known work is a societal tragedy and a story of identity loss and generational conflict. Loman, an archetypical small businessman, becomes a victim of the American dream of success and prosperity, and of his own failure as a father.
Luk Perceval's drama is set in today’s Germany, the hell is there from the beginning, puffed up with grunge and football quotes (“there is only one Biffy Loman!”). A psychological approach is unnecessary, as Perceval cracks open the closed theatre atmosphere with stage tableaux, in which the characters often look in the same direction (at the TV), and periods of agitation are followed by those of helplessness. The principle is simple, but does not miss its mark.
Perceval and his designer Katrin Brack have found an impressive means of turning a dream into a performance which not only tells of the capitalist religion of growth – with a little watering can perched on the TV, altar-like – but also illustrates the jungle in which one is left to his own devices, gets lost, and seldom comes home a victor.
As Max Glauner from Freitag says: “Without any theatricality, Perceval’s Death of a Salesman has become a theatre event.“