When the horizon of the future darkens, tales of vampires are booming. In fact, there is no people on earth who are unfamiliar with these stories. No people on earth to whom nature, which they have learned to control and consume, has not returned as a terrifying figure.
The visual artist, scenographer and director Philippe Quesne is a master of whimsical and fantastic image theater. In multi-layered scores, he weaves aesthetic and scientific questions into delicate, melancholy and extremely cheerful panoramas of our time, in which the momentum of transformation always plays the decisive role. As the head of the French performance company Studio Vivarium, he has been one of Europe's most successful theater makers for more than two decades. The Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers in Paris, which he directed from 2014 to 2020, was considered a hotspot for new theater concepts.
For the first time, he will now be directing at the Deutsches SchauSpielHaus in Hamburg, bringing together members of Studio Vivarium and our ensemble to defy the fears of our present together with them. Quesne's works are an expression of the art of survival in dangerous times. They ask about community building and how we deal with the environment. Where does our sense of crisis come from? How does humanity measure reality? In ever new experiments, they trace the development of human history, its highs and lows. Each new production sees itself as the next stage of this great life project,
which can also be read as a lucid play of references to our cultural influences.
And so the beginning of "Vampire's Mountain" may seem familiar at first: a remote place. A few people from different backgrounds arrive one by one. Nobody knows exactly what they are being asked to do. Is there an inheritance to be made? Something, at any rate, lies buried deep. Or has it already emerged from the earth? The uncertainty creates a fantastic alertness that slowly but surely changes perception: Don't the bare mountain peaks in the distance look like the teeth of a vampire?
World premiere October 16
Further performances: October 19 and 30, 2025
