April 2000 - Nr. 4
Fire in the Head
North American Premiere by Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg Germany
"All five performances merit the highest praise...an unmissable show!" - The Herald
Hailed as the most exciting piece of new writing in recent German theatre, 24-year-old Marius von Mayenburg’s Fire in the Head (Feuergesicht) is a disturbing portrait of a family’s disintegration, telling the tale of an ordinary suburban family that spirals towards tragedy as the children reach adolescence.
Isolated from the outside world, 14-year-old Kurt gets his kicks from fire-raising. The more he is drawn into this anti-social pastime, the more his elder sister is drawn towards him and joins in his destructive activities. Kurt’s obsession with fire leads the pair further into a world of their own, where the unthinkable is their only reality.
Fire in the Head has won innumerable European awards including the Kleist Award and the Award of the City of Heidelberg.
Marius von Mayenburg studied playwriting in Berlin. His first play, Hamann, was the study of a serial killer. It was followed by Psychopaten, a paraphrase of Hitchcock’s Psycho, and Monsterdämmerung, a grotesque farce. Fire in the Head is his fourth play. Marius is currently working as a dramaturge at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg and is about to direct his first production.
Thirty-one-year-old Thomas Ostermeier is one of the most prominent theatre directors in Germany today. Ostermeier’s secret lies in a combination of hip programming and meticulous stagecraft. He began his theatre education as a visiting student to the drama department of the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin. After taking charge of Die Baracke in 1996, Ostermeier made a name for himself by challenging old certainties and opening the doors to a new generation of writers. His work includes German premieres of David Harrower’s Knives in Hens, Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs and Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking, Following in the footsteps of Peter Stein and Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Ostermeier was recently appointed artistic director of the prestigious Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin.
The North American Premiere consists of 6 performances, April 12-16, at the Imperial Oil Opera Theatre.
