The great world theater

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The great world theater (El gran teatro del mundo) is a mystery play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca . It was first published in 1655 and was probably created in the 1630s. It is the most famous car sacramental from Calderón.

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The theme of the play is human life, which is presented as a play. At the beginning the creator (in Eichendorff's case the master ) appears who, as it were, as the author of the upcoming play, distributes the various roles. He commissions the world (El Mundo) to put the piece into work. Each role represents a certain aspect of life: the king , wisdom , beauty , the rich , the farmer , the poor , an unbaptized deceased child (as the embodiment of original sin). The actors receive what they need to play their role, they should be able to play it well according to the motto: "Do well, because God is God". They are supported and admonished by the law of grace (La Ley de Gracia), which keeps the motto in mind. The stage becomes the world, which has a gate for the appearance (la cuna, the cradle) and a gate for the exit (el sepulcro, the grave).

Now every “actor” realizes his role in the world and everyone reacts as his social and moral circumstances dictate. So in the course of the play the poor man appears who asks the others for alms; but the rich man denies it. At the end of the play, the actors have to give back what they got for the performance of their role - naked, as they came on stage, they have to give up again.

The great world theater in Einsiedeln

The great world theater of Pedro Calderón de la Barca was staged from 1924 to 1992 at irregular intervals in the central Swiss pilgrimage site of Einsiedeln by the World Theater Society as an open-air play on the monastery square there. The initiative to set up the game went back in 1924 to Abbot Ignatius Staub from Einsiedeln Monastery , the theater historian Father Raphael Häne, the Rhinelander actor Peter Erkelenz and Linus Birchler , professor of art history and baroque researcher from Einsiedeln.

For the playing period in 2000, the Einsiedeln World Theater Society performed the play Einsiedler Welttheater after Calderón de la Barca in a new adaptation of the subject matter by the writer Thomas Hürlimann . For the performances in 2007, Hürlimann had rewritten the piece. The content remained similar; what changed were some characters. The decisive turning point was that in Hürlimann's second version “el autor” - which stands for God himself - was missing. The game was thus about a world that was godless from the start and is approaching its end. Volker Hesse directed 2000 and 2007.

In the last playing period from June 21 to September 7, 2013, 40 performances took place. Writer Tim Krohn took on the play, it was staged by director Beat Fäh .

Season 2020

As the Welttheatergesellschaft announced on June 14, 2017, the next performance will take place in 2020. The artistic direction will be taken over by Lukas Bärfuss as the author and Livio Andreina as the director.

Open air performances in Germany

In Bad Godesberg , the first attempt at a large-scale production by Peter Erkelenz in a specially built expressionist open-air theater was successful, but failed the following year due to the bad weather in summer 1927. The Gesellschaft für Festspiele went bankrupt. However, this staging and the editing of the text by Karl Schorn became the model for open-air performances in Saarwellingen in 1949, 1950 and 1956. As early as 1947, the Catholic youth of Diefflen had performed the game on the summit of the Litermont . Hermann Wedekind staged the mystery play for the Balver Höhle Festival several times in 1950 and 1995 . In 1953 the play was performed by the Emsland open-air theater in Meppen .

In 2017, Annette Storr from the Bühnen Dautenheim staged the play for the open-air theater there, combined with an attempt to revive historical performance practice. In the summer of 2018, the ensemble toured through Rheinhessen on the historic horse-drawn harvest wagon stage .

The open-air performance 2019 in Blankenau in the Propteischlossgarten

In 2019 the ensemble of the traveling theater troupe buehnendautenheims toured again with the stage, which is based on historical hay wagons, pulled by an old tractor (built in 1958) (two harvest wagons tied together).

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Einsiedler Welttheater 2020 with Lukas Bärfuss and Livio Andreina. (PDF) press release. In: welttheater.ch. Welttheatergesellschaft Einsiedeln, June 14, 2017, accessed on October 16, 2017 .
  2. ^ Johann Spurk: Parish Chronicle of St. Josef Diefflen 1900–1975, Saarlouis 1975, p. 140.