Andersens Märchen (UA)

Where else can imagination have free rein, where else can mermaids go ashore, can storks tell each other stories, can ugly ducklings become proud swans, if not in fairytales?
But what if the fairytales run out? A storyteller has to make this devastating experience one day. He is at a loss, where can he go from here? On his search, he comes across the moor-woman who may be able to help him. She shows him the way to the lost fairytales. But it is not an easy journey: He has to pass many challenges, strange creatures cross his path and slowly open up the door to imagination for him. Step by step, he finds his way back to the magic that prevents everyday life from being flat and dismal.

“Andersens Märchen” is not the first time that Stephan Beer and Georg Burger explore the world of Hans Christian Andersen. In his stories, the Danish writer dealt with a multitude of very personal subjects: the poverty in which he grew up, the search for his own identity and recognition, his life as an outsider.

With “Die Nachtigall” and “Die Eisjungfrau“, Beer and Burger staged two of Andersen’s tales in Leipzig. In their new Christmas play at Schauspiel Leipzig, they will now bring a wide range of characters and motifs from the writer’s rich narrative cosmos to life.

Stephan Beer has been working as a freelance author and director since 2006, and he is considered to be an expert at adapting fairytales and literature for young readers for the stage. His productions have led him to theatres including Theater Magdeburg, Hans Otto Theater Potsdam, Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, tjg. Theater junge generation Dresden and repeatedly to Schauspiel Leipzig. In 2007, his production of the German-language premiere of “Titus” by Jan Sobrie was invited to Deutsches Kinder- und Jugendtheatertreffen in Berlin. Stephan Beer has been Head of Drama at Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern since the 2023/24 season.

Georg Burger studied scenography at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG). As a freelance set and costume designer, he has worked at theatres including Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Staatstheater Braunschweig, Hans Otto Theater Potsdam and GRIPS Theater Berlin. In 2002, he was selected as Best Emerging Set Designer by the critics’ poll in the expert magazine Theater heute. Furthermore, he teaches at HfG Karlsruhe and at ZKM Center for Art and Culture Karlsruhe.