Harriet Maria & Peter Meining

Harriet Maria & Peter Meining, aka norton.commander, staged ‘Genetik Woyzeck. A video conference with a fatal outcome based on Georg Büchner’ at the Festspielhaus Hellerau in 1997. “On stage, there is only a white couch. The only real actor, Lars Rudolph, is sitting on it. He plays Woyzeck – the rest is fiction. He films himself with a micro camera, capturing even the most intimate moments – which are then shown on monitors in the theater. His opponents do not appear in person, but are relegated to two huge screens as living images. They are stars of the media world.‘ – according to the 1997 play text. According to SPIEGEL at the time, the production ’focuses on the fictional connection between people and the media, including its stars”.

Twenty-eight years after its premiere, Harriet Maria & Peter Meining are reviving this groundbreaking production, along with the new questions raised by ‘the fictional relationship between people and the media’ in the age of AI, populism and ‘fake news.’ In addition to Lars Rudolph, the film features Blixa Bargeld, Ben Becker, Frank Castorf, Nick Cave, Dietmar Diesner, Herbert Fritsch, Irm Hermann, Udo Lindenberg, Markus Lüpertz, Joachim Maaz, Eva Mattes, Rebecca Meining, Ulrich Meyer, Dr. Motte, Pigor und Eichhorn, Uwe Preuss, Heinz Rennhack, Hans Scheuerecker, Christoph Schlingensief, Alexander Schröder, Hanna Schygulla, Otto Sander, Bert Stephan, Alan Vega, Ulrich Wildgruber, Martin Wuttke.