Nosferatu

When Jonathan is tasked with selling the property next to his own house to a foreign count, this initially sounds like an unexpected career boost and a change of scenery and new impressions to be made during a business trip of several weeks. His fiancée Mina, however, finds it hard to be happy for him. She has an uneasy feeling about this journey to an estate in Transylvania. However, he sets out on the very next day.

Jonathan leaves the city’s pulsating hustle and bustle and finds himself in increasingly sparse and wild landscapes. People and encounters, too, become more and more strange and superstitious as his journey progresses, and his host appears to be the culmination of this. Of a pale and emaciated stature, he only appears at night, never touches a crumb at dinner. But when Jonathan cuts himself with the breadknife, he licks the blood from his finger. When the Count’s pointed teeth finally flash above Jonathan’s bed, one thing is clear: Mere aplomb will not be enough to cope with these events. But until the traveller finally realises what the threat really is, the Count has already introduced himself to those who stayed at home.
Because Mina not only has to worry about her fiancé whose letters suddenly fail to arrive: Her friend Lucy, too, seems to be unwell. Day by day, or rather, night by night, she becomes ever more pale and fragile. As if her life force were slowly draining away. And then there are those tiny red marks on her neck. Lucy may be in the capable hands of Doctor van Helsing, but this illness seems to challenge even van Helsing’s expertise. And it isn’t just Lucy who succumbs to this disease: One by one, the entire town’s residents become afflicted.

In his late 19th century novel “Dracula”, Bram Stoker created what was to become the fixed star of all literary vampire characters. Starting from F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu”, a silent movie whose iconography has burned itself into our collective memory, the motif of the undead bloodsucker still fascinates our present day pop culture. Absorbing something vital to ensure one’s own continuance is the dynamic of life itself. It is only in the character of the vampire that this momentum overreaches because it is self-indulgent and takes away the lives of others. This focus on one’s own pleasure is the reason why we are so fascinated with the wraithlike shadow that will descend on the reddish façade of the Grassimuseum this summer. Located in the city centre, its vocabulary of forms from functionalism to Art Déco creates a very special atmosphere for balmy theatre nights.

Katharina Ramser studied theatre studies, art history and philosophy at the University of Bern and at Humboldt Universität Berlin. After initially working as an assistant director, she has been a freelance director since 2007. In addition to works in the independent theatre scenes of Zurich, Chur and Bern, she has staged productions at Deutsches Theater Göttingen, Stadttheater Bern, Stadttheater Gießen and at Staatstheater Mainz. In 2009, she founded the artists’ collective STRAUSS and in 2019, she staged her first opera production, “Border” by Ludger Vollmer. “Nosferatu” is her introduction to Schauspiel Leipzig