German premier

Mephistopheles shoulders his net with that he, like an evil spider, wants to capture Doctor Faustus. The heavenly hosts must let him go, the well-known pact is sealed, Gretchen is seduced and fate takes its course. Techno-rhythms hammer away, Orff’s »Carmina burana« rings out, a thrilling entertainment loaded with hidden meaning and fun. The devil as master of revelry, as a demon and slapstick comedian simultaneously – a case of déjà vu?

Hardly would have a local director dared to approach this most Thespian of all German dramas so silently as the mimes from Tbilissi. That the crux of the matter is still kept, is one of the evening’s great suprises. This monument of world literature, this magnificent massing of philosophy, personifications and opinions is presented by means of form and mimic as a relaxed, lively, offering. Hot Georgian tempers pair themselves with frolic at play and the collision of a completely different cultural area. This encounter virtually creates a miracle of theatre art.

Mortal man takes stock of his accomplishments: is that all there is to life? To acquire knowledge, to live, to work. One, whom he himself conjured, offers him a chance at youth, beauty, love and wealth. Explosive action changes within seconds to time-lapse events or living still lifes. The first part of the production deliberately includes elements of traditional pantomime in the new possibilities of mimic presentation. Excessiveness and alienation characterise the second part that hints at the worlds of amusement, witches, wealth and antiquity, the thirst for knowledge. The carnival procession, the encounter with Helena, the big dam project, they all are foreseeable.

The Mimodram Theatre emerges out of the nucleus of the renown state-owned Pantomime Theatre Tbilissi’s ensemble. The five young artists decided in 1993 after the political changes in Georgia to make their own way and established the Mimodram Theatre as the first independent Georgian theatre group. Ekaterina Robackidse was a dancer in the ballet of the state-owned Opera Tbilissi and joined the company in 1995. The highly talented, many times prize-awarded artists are unable to work as they would like due to the difficult situation in their native land and therefore receive active support from their partner city Saarbrücken. By now the Mimodram Theatre belongs to the internationally lionised cream of the mimic dance and movement theatre and plays for the first time in the new federal provinces of Germany.