“The Feast”: revelations at a family celebration | NDR.de – Culture
Status: 01/21/2023 00:01
In 1998, Danish director Thomas Vinterberg made his first film based on the Dogma rules, “Das Fest”. Stephan Kimmig has made a new version for the theater at the Hannover Schauspiel.
A party room with a lower ceiling and subtly patterned wallpaper. Dressed up smartly and anxious to present a good picture, a party dances tensely. The family got together to celebrate Helge’s 60th birthday. That the master of the house greets his guests on the bottom floor – a symbol of the morass of abuse that later arises.
But that’s not all. “It keeps the guests from eating because it keeps chasing them down into the basement – so they have to go up and down,” explains director Stephan Kimmig. “He determines, so to speak, and celebrates his system of power – that only he decides when, what, how and where happens. Everyone is my subject, basically, and that’s material that I can deal with as I want.”
Birthday speech drops the bombshell
The patriarch finds fault with everyone – his three children and their partners. His daughter Linda took her own life three weeks ago. Her twin brother Christian made public in his birthday speech that the father triggered the suicide because he abused Linda. Then the situation escalates.
Fabian Dott plays Christian: “I find the speech to be a bomb, but in the end it’s more the reaction to this speech that’s interesting,” says the actor. “How are the siblings reacting, how is the family reacting to that? I find that he’s stubborn and adamant about that. When a truth comes out, it needs to be pursued and it’s a wildfire that can’t be stopped.”
“The Festival” in Hanover: How do you overthrow a dictator?
The ghost of Linda is in the room, symbolized by a child in tails, who accompanies the events like an emcee. Contact with him is no longer possible. In Neudeutsch this is reminiscent of ghosting, the unannounced breaking of contact in order to avoid a difficult conversation.
And there are other current socio-political perspectives that interest Stephan Kimmig: “Out of the pandemic: We talked about what actually happened there. It has become known that abuse at home – unfortunately – has increased totally during the pandemic Pandemic. But another topic has come up: How do you overthrow a dictator – this father of a family, this patriarchal system, the head, so to speak, who sets the rules? What he’s doing is purely an exercise of power.”
Surviving severe trauma is sometimes only possible if you consistently ignore the crime and the perpetrator. A topic that Stephan Kimmig has often dealt with – most recently in Hanover in the “Rivka”. This production is about the family history of a Holocaust survivor.
Further information
“The Festival”: revelations at a family celebration
Stephan Kimmig has made a new version of the Dogma film “Das Fest” for the Hannover Theater.
- Art:
- stage
- Date:
- End:
- Location:
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Playhouse Hanover
Prinzenstrasse 9
30159 Hanover - Price:
- from 5 euros
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