Gerhard Meister

"Yeah, you should get your comedy. Or perhaps a fairy tale? Whatever. Anyway, in the leading role there’s a lonely poet at work on his manuscript." Once upon a time there was a lonely poet sitting over his manuscript and forcing out verse after verse. The work was laborious, and becoming more laborious. Who was that Nathan, whom he had sweated out line by line, and what did this Nathan have to do with himself, the old, deadly illl man who had grown bitter? What, for God’s sake, was he doing there? And for whom was he doing it? He could do nothing more with this Nathan. He had gotten up again and again, enough already. Had hidden away the death of his wife and child in his heart, and his own sick body, and the censorship. Now it was no longer possible.

How had he ever pinned the murder of his wife and children on Nathan and then do what with him? Guess. Hide away. Who hides something like this? Who the hell was as wise as Nathan? He wasn’t anyway, that was more and more clear. And this Nathan, what was he then? A rickety marionette, on whom he had painted a wise face, verse by verse. Enough."

Stilleben Herr mit Kätzchen was created as commission for the Staatstheater Braunschweig and was presented to the public for the first time in a workshop production on the occasion of the 275th birthday of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. This contemporary approach to the classical author offers an ideal frame for the productions of his original plays.