Robert Lepage is developing a new piece with players from the Schaubühne ensemble. At the beginning of rehearsals there was no text, no story, no characters, just one object: a deck of cards. He assigns the four card suits hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds to love, faith, war and money. From the cards, their color families, figures and numbers, entire worlds, a wide variety of characters and four interwoven storylines were created through improvisations, spanning eight decades of German history. They tell of love, of the search for happiness and the temptation of the devil, of hope, fate and trauma. Wars always mark a turning point, an end and the new beginning of another story: Shortly after the Second World War, a baby is left in a nunnery and grows up there, only to leave the young Federal Republic for Paris when he is barely an adult. When she had twins herself, a tarot card reader prophesied bad luck and advised her to give the children away. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the supposed end of the Cold War, a West German couple spends Valentine’s Day in Baden-Baden. Because smoking is allowed in the casino, the wife ends up there, where she discovers gambling and gambles away her family’s disastrous legacy. A soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder tells his therapist about how he lost his most loyal comrade during a mission in Afghanistan – a service dog, his closest companion and yet, from the military’s perspective, just part of the equipment in an emergency. And shortly before the outbreak of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, a gay couple wanted to fulfill their desire to have children with a surrogate mother.
Robert Lepage was born in Quebec in 1957, where he still lives today. With productions for theater, opera, circus and film work, he has been one of the world’s most important contemporary storytellers and theater makers for more than three decades. In 2022, FIND dedicated a focus to him and showed the legendary production “The Seven Streams of the River Ota” and his highly acclaimed solo “887”. With “Faith, Money, War and Love” he developed and staged a work with the Schaubühne ensemble for the first time.
Artists/participants: (video), Vanessa Sampaio Borgmann (costumes), Nils Haarmann (dramaturgy), Robert Lepage (stage), Robert Lepage (director), Stefan Pinkernell (sound), Erich Schneider (light), Ulla Willis (stage) , Damir Avdic (with), Stephanie Eidt (with), Christoph Gawenda (with), Magdalena Lermer (with), Bastian Reiber (with), Stefan Stern (with), Alina Vimbai Strähler (with)
