Ulysses

In the organizer's words:

An odyssey through Kassel after James Joyce

Based on the wanderings of the Greek hero Odysseus, James Joyce's novel Ulysses tells of the events of a single day - June 16, 1904 - in Dublin. Bert Zander's production transfers this structure to the present day: during the performance, a large part of the ensemble is out and about in the city. Scenes are transmitted into the theater space from squares, pubs and the rooftops of Kassel.

But instead of heroic adventures, the characters in the novel experience the everyday trials of life in an urban, alienated world. This world resembles our own in its normality - throughout the ages. The encounters are also less like the mythical challenges of the ancient monsters Scylla and Charybdis and more like those that determine our lives today. They are not fighting monsters, but rather issues such as identity, loneliness, love, sexuality and the meaning of life.

The focus is on three characters on their way through Kassel: Stephen Dedalus, a young, intellectual artist; Leopold Bloom, who passes the day thinking among strangers and friends in the city instead of seeking a conversation with his wife; and the Other, who repeatedly slips into new roles and thus drives the story in different directions. Molly Bloom decides to stay at home. Over her shoulder, we experience a male-dominated world - from antiquity to the present day. At least until the moment when her perspective becomes audible and she too is given the space to let her thoughts wander and give what she has previously heard a different direction.

Ulysses, the novel that made James Joyce famous, is considered one of the great literary masterpieces of the 20th century. When it was published, it was condemned as blasphemous and pornographic and was soon censored or banned in several countries. Virginia Woolf called it "the most boring novel in the world". Kurt Tucholsky likened the work to a Maggi stock cube that has been mediocrely brewed for generations.

Bert Zander's production brings the radically human narrative of Ulysses into a form somewhere between theater and film. After War and Peace and Faust-Gretchen, his third work at the Staatstheater Kassel is a new encounter with one of the great works of world literature. When asked how the plot and moral of the novel can be summarized, Zander quotes the last word of Ulysses: "Yes."

In cooperation with the Bierhimmel, the GRIMMWELT Kassel, the Lolita Bar and the University of Kassel - Landes- und Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel.