Nacht ohne Sterne (DSE)

We are living in a time where the loss of a Kindergarten-place represents an existential threat. This realisation marks the beginning of Berhard Studlar’s journey through the night in an indeterminate big city, where an array of scintillating characters come across each other’s’ paths – the family man who turns into a knife murderer, the loan shark who conceals a loving father’s heart underneath his professional brutality, an emergency doctor on the verge of a nervous breakdown, an unmasked angel and death himself in the guise of a janitor. The all struggle for a tiny bit of stable ground beneath their feet in the face of an ever more fragile surface of civilisation – a dance on the volcano, at times reminiscent of Schnitzler’s “La Ronde”, at times of a danse macabre. Some characters will not live to see the morning and none of them will be quite who they were. 

Bernhard Studlar characters show that their author listens closely to our brittle times – with all their grounding in reality, they are always pervaded by a tinge of the fantastic that lets them look into an enchanted mirror, reflecting something like the slight chance of a yearning fulfilled after all.
“Nacht ohne Sterne” had its world premiere as a commissioned work at the National Theatre in Bratislava in 2017 and Schauspiel Leipzig now produces the German-language premiere. Bernhard Studlar’s “Die Ermüdeten oder Das Etwas, das wir sind” saw its world premiere at Schauspiel Leipzig in 2015; the production is still in repertory at Diskothek.