Maria Milisavljevic

Peer Gynt - narcissist, bon vivant, liar: in his "Nordic Faust" Henrik Ibsen tells the biography of an egomaniac in many stages, which could also have originated in our present-day society in its basic features more than 150 years later. For this reason, the Regensburg Theatre has commissioned its in-house playwright Maria Milisavljevic to write a version of the material from today's perspective.

Peer Gynt is human. And in the 21st century, Peer is also a woman. A woman who lies. Again and again. With the wildest stories, she dreams herself away from her bleak life, in which her father destroyed the family's livelihood in drunkenness and her mother abandoned Aase and her in misery. She longs for fame and recognition, yet everyone only smiles at her. There is no place for her in the village - because she refuses to be instrumentalised by society as a woman. The more rejection she feels, the more imaginative her lies become, with which she escapes all family and social obligations. After Aase's death, she is not only guided by the motto of her life, "Be sufficient unto yourself", but is literally driven through the world in a life-hungry and manic search for herself, constantly oscillating between essence and appearance. Those who are always true to themselves must inevitably disappoint others.

But what remains in the end, after a seemingly dazzling life as an outsider? Where to go with the fear of mediocrity, the addiction to self-dramatisation and the constant search for affirmation and love? (Announcement Theatre Regensburg)

"Seeing Peer Gynt, this egomaniac who takes everything for himself, interpreted as a woman's role has an effect, brings to light the still encrusted gender attributions." (Süddeutsche Zeitung)