Die Marquise von O. und – (The Marquise of O.) based on the novella by Heinrich von Kleist

In her first work at the Deutsches Theater, Hungarian director Ildikó Gáspár interweaves three other cases “based on true events” with that of the Marquise. Franca Viola was kidnapped and raped by her criminal ex-fiancé in Italy in 1966 in order to force her to marry him through the legal means of “restorative marriage.” Erika Renner was attacked by her ex-boyfriend in her own apartment in 2013, drugged, and then mutilated with lye. And finally, Gisèle Pelicot, the woman who, after 50 years of marriage, learns from investigators that her husband had regularly drugged and raped her for almost ten years and offered her to dozens of other men on the internet for rape.

Four women. Three centuries. And yet the same patterns: violence. Silence. Blame reversal. But also: resistance. Voice. Change. Whether fictional like the Marquise, historical like Viola, or contemporary like Pelicot and Renner—they all tell us what happens when women no longer remain silent, when they leave the space of shame and force the perpetrators into it.

SET AND COSTUME Lili Izsák VIDEO András Juhász MUSIC Flóra Lili Matisz CHOREOGRAPHY Barnabás Horkay LIGHTCornelia Gloth DRAMATURGY Jasmin Maghames DIRECTING Ildiko Gaspar

https://www.deutschestheater.de/programm/produktionen/die-marquise-von-o-und

Tagesspiegel (Christine Wahl): "Gáspár and her cast genuinely succeed in taking the questions posed by von Kleist regarding power, powerlessness, and violence, and thinking them through logically into the present, while using them to problematize social conditions (...)."

Berliner Morgenpost (Uwe Sauerwein): "When the revolve starts moving, the back wall becomes a projection surface on which court testimonies are experienced in large format. An elaborate apparatus that does not obscure the seven people on stage (...), but rather accentuates their acting."

nachtkritik.de (Georg Kasch): "An evening that gets under your skin."

Theater heute (Eva Behrend): "Ildikó Gáspár’s performative storytelling theatre creates a dark pull, allowing the audience to switch between horrified empathy and analytical detachment. Reality and literature illuminate one another."

Süddeutsche Zeitung (Peter Laudenbach): "Ildikó Gáspár’s production of the crime against Gisèle Pelicot on the large DT stage (...) is furious and painful, yet far too reflective and formally conscious to settle for fervent agitprop exclamation marks."

Karsten Bemmel (Teacher, German History/Publikum): "...the voices and sparse gestures of the ensemble, which plays with restrained, finely dosed intensity, are enough to bring the case of the Marquise to life in this alienated environment."

FAZ (Irene Bazinger): "The ensemble plays together excellently under Ildikó Gáspár’s direction, turning this production into an intelligent, updated, and consistently gripping paraphrase of a classic, serving as a documentary experiment on everyday misogyny."