Maria Stuart

Stroboscopic lighting is used in this production.

The main female characters Mary Stuart and Elisabeth are both played by Pia Händler and Lisa Stiegler. The cast is drawn by lot at the beginning of each performance.

Mary Stuart, the dethroned Scottish queen, seeks asylum in England, but soon finds herself imprisoned as her aunt, Queen Elizabeth Tudor of England, begins an investigation against her: Maria was allegedly involved in the murder of her husband at the age of seventeen - according to the official accusation, but rumour has it that she was also involved in a very recent coup plot. Schiller does not portray any of his protagonists in a particularly flattering light: Maria as an impulsive seductress, Elisabeth as a jealous and decision-shy regent. He writes to Goethe in 1799 about his «poetic struggle with the historical material» before he succeeds in «giving the imagination freedom over history». And this freedom also consists of turning the much-loved «Virgin Queen» - who during her reign pacified years of quarrelling with France, consolidated the national budget, laid the foundations for naval power and the Commonwealth, and created a heyday for the arts and sciences - into a procrastinator who would rather die than decide on the conflict with Mary. Schiller's own present is also inscribed in the play here, in which Marie Antoinette met her end on the scaffold a few years earlier as one of the front women of absolutism: «This land, my lady, has in recent times / Seen more of the royal women descend from the throne / To the scaffold of blood». For in the background of this political thriller about succession to office and state confession, the popular uprising is always lurking, which could ultimately cost both queens their collars.

Schiller makes not only the court, but also his majesties themselves doubt whether a single person is capable of making decisions in the interests of the people, and he plays out this «fear, the terrible accompaniment of tyranny» in all its shades. In this way, he not only writes a play about the hesitation of a ruler, but also about the necessity of democracy. It is perhaps no coincidence that this debate begins, as in the ancient «Oresteia», with the murder of a husband and ends in the madness of the individual's decision.

«A play about NOT acting. About the radical loneliness and inescapable (inescapable) power into which a human ruler falls. I am interested in this woman's fascination with the other, in recognising herself in the other. And her eventual action in spite of this, driven by an inherently wrong system in which there can only be one decision.» Nora Schlocker

But what if decisions made by the state have no individual room for manoeuvre and only chance decides on power and powerlessness? Then the roles could also be «swapped». For each performance, a lot is drawn to decide which of the two actresses will play the victor or the vanquished.