by Bertolt Brecht
A married couple who fear being denounced by their son. A Jewish woman who leaves her husband and goes into exile because society excludes him. A couple who hear the arrest of their neighbor, whom they betrayed. Or a family whose dead son is brought home in a sealed zinc coffin so that it is no longer possible to tell how he died. In his play Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, which premiered in 1938, Bertolt Brecht tells how a dictatorial system takes hold of everyday life, the social fabric, and family structures in German society.
For director Timofey Kuljabin, this system captures language itself. His production draws a line from loud propaganda to silence and focuses on the uncanny relevance of Brecht's material.
Until the start of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, Timofey Kuljabin was artistic director of the Red Torch Theater in Novosibirsk and staged productions at the Moscow Theater of Nations and the Bolshoi Theater, among others. Since then, he has worked at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, the National Theater Sofia, the Opéra National de Lyon, and the Dailes Theater in Riga (In the Solitude of Cotton Fields with John Malkovich), among others. In the summer of 2024, Kuljabin's production of Iphigenia in Aulis premiered at the Athens and Epidauros Festival.
