SILVER PRINCE

WORLD PREMIERE

11 January 2018

Collenbach-Saal, Düsseldorf

The research 2014/15 on the Bauhaus for our production TRIAS – Das triadische Ballett led to an intensive study of the founder and long-time director of the Bauhaus: the architect Walter Gropius.

From 1919–1928, Walter Gropius was the founder and director of the Bauhaus. Those nine years form the framework for this THEATER DER KLÄNGE production. Nine years marked by political quarrels over the Bauhaus, by the struggle to implement innovative ideas, and by the end of his first marriage and the beginning of his second. Walter Gropius was already called “the Silver Prince” at the Bauhaus because of the early greying of his hair and the noblesse of his appearance.

“The Silver Prince – Nine Views of Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus” is a theatre play conceived for the media. It reflects the nine years in which Walter Gropius championed the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau. The contemporaries embodied by the ensemble – all historical figures: Max Thedy, Hans Groß, Johannes Itten, Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Alma Mahler, Ise Gropius, Fritz Hesse and Hannes Meyer – each portray Gropius from very different perspectives.

In 30 scenes, six actors slip in flying changes – open on stage – into ten main roles and numerous supporting roles. The video scenography structures the mosaic, suggests spaces and periods, and provides background information.

The script began in 2014 as a working draft for a staged reading; between November 2017 and January 2018 the material was substantially revised and staged in close collaboration with the premiere ensemble. The research drew on the Bauhaus Archive Berlin and the libraries of Weimar University and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.

Those who wish to understand the background of the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau during the turbulent years of its founder and long-serving director will find in this piece a vivid portrait — one that focuses less on the familiar art-and-architecture myth than on a time portrait of a visionary and contested institution in the Weimar Republic. The Silver Prince is the first theatre production dedicated to this chapter of German history.

Social vision, political struggle, love, avant-garde and the looming failure of modernity – many themes are reflected in these views on the person of Walter Gropius.