Wallenstein

In the Thirty Years’ War, Wallenstein is the commander-in-chief leading numerous armies of mercenaries. He pays them by plundering conquered territory while also making a profit himself, in keeping with the motto “war feeds war.” When Wallenstein tries to seize political power, the emperor has him murdered. In 2023 Yevgeny Prigozhin, “Putin’s cook” and the head of the mercenary Wagner Group, sets off with his troops to march on Moscow. Their uprising fails and a plane with Prigozhin on board crashes soon afterwards. Deploying an exuberant wealth of creative ideas, references and styles, Jan-Christoph Gockel combines Friedrich Schiller’s monumental Wallenstein trilogy with the production team’s two-year research project into current ex-mercenaries. At the centre of this imaginative production are the people in Wallenstein’s Camp: soldiers, traders, children and peasants from his retinue – and their contemporary equivalents. How can war be depicted as a way of life? With a celebratory meal on stage, a party, live video, puppets, acting and a lecture performance, Gockel and ensemble devise a spectacle to appeal to all the senses.  

Jury Statement

“A dual portrait of the mechanics of war and an exuberant celebration of the theatre: this Wallenstein accomplishes both these and much more. Jan-Christoph Gockel and his team of individualists take seven hours over it. But the fact that these don’t drag is due to the multitude of perspectives presented on the material, which sometimes grate but always argue wonderfully with each other. The piece is about armies of mercenaries past and present, about military puppet masters who are hanging precariously by a thread themselves, about loyalty and the difficulty of ending wars. Central to the visual worlds and humour of the evening are Schiller’s famous line ‘war nourishes war’, the figure of the Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Harry Potter spell ‘riddikulus’, which transforms frightening creatures into something comic and dispels the paralysis of fear. In this immersive masterpiece, however, with elements of investigative and literary theatre, performance, live acting and puppetry, subtle irony, satire and seriousness, everything remains in motion. Even hope for the human being within the soldier.”
– Sabine Leucht for the Theatertreffen-jury

Tothe video statement (in German)

DigitalProgramme Booklet on the website of Münchner Kammerspiele (in German)

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The Menu Sequence

55 minutes – 1st course: Wallensteins Lager

25 minutes – Intermission

1 hour 40 minutes – 2nd course: Die Piccolomini & 3rd course: Russischer Kitsch

25 minutes – Intermission

1 hour – 4th course: Wallensteins Traum

1 hour – Intermission

1 hour 30 minutes – 5th course: Zhenyas Lager & 6th course: Wallensteins Tod & 7th course: Kriegsende

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