THEATER an der GLOCKSEE Hannover

theatre project development documentation activism

»We had so much talent to be for something. And have spent our lives having to be against something.«
— from an interview with Gustav Gründgens

The year is 2030. The party is over. Amidst the remnants of a grand celebration, we encounter three figures who reflect on the path of recent political change.

Klaus Mann's ‘Mephisto: A Novel of a Career’ uses the real biography of the prominent German actor Gustav Gründgens for its narrative about the actor Hendrik Höfgen, who rose from playing Mephisto to becoming general director during the rise of National Socialism from 1926 to 1936.

The project MEPHISTO. UNDER PRESSURE. combines excerpts from the novel with today's realities and interviews with cultural figures for a bitterly angry and brutally poetic project about what might lie ahead for us or has already become everyday life elsewhere.