A club at night in Germany. The bass is booming. Sweat flows. In the dark confines of the dance floor, bodies press against each other, each alone yet collectively moved by the driving beats. While the world outside as we know is coming to an end and the dreams of a better world seem to be over, clubs, saunas and dark rooms become spaces of a utopian world. Here, one still seems to be able to live safely and in a relaxed manner: Codes of conduct can be found on the doors of the clubs, there are self-commitments to sustainability, and awareness teams ensure that all guests can party peacefully during the evening. Is the club the only place where we can switch off, where we still believe in a better future?
Whether climate catastrophe, war, or inflation: our society is confronted with many crises. When people consciously decide not to have children for moral or ecological reasons because longer-term planning for the future seems impossible or disproportionate, it becomes abundantly clear that our society is ailing. To escape, nihilism becomes the only mission; to forget one's own mortality, one lives excessively. How much escapism can a society tolerate that unrestrainedly grasps at any straw to forget that it is mortal?
Molière's comedy Don Juan from 1682 is certainly the most famous literary examination of the prototype of the seducer of women. Yet Don Juan is more than that: an immoderate border-crosser who defies all traditional norms and calls valid values and ideals into question. But Molière shows him above all as a driven man, a metaphysically uninhabited man, a man in search of meaning. The young Polish director Mateusz Staniak, who introduced himself to the Bochum audience in 2021 with the production Wer hat meinen Vater umgebracht?, relates Don Juan's search movement to today's club culture: in the lustful, also self-destructive affirmation of today without questions about tomorrow.
- Don Juan
- Am Ende aller Tage
- after Molière
- Director: Mateusz Staniak
- Place: Kammerspiele
- First performance/Premiere: 01.12.2023
- Director: Mateusz Staniak
- Director: Mateusz Staniak