Dantons Tod

Universitätsring 2

1010 Wien

 

Violence as a political tool is back in popularity. “Whoever prevents me from defending myself kills me as well as if he attacked me,” says Robespierre. “Where self-defense ends, murder begins,” says Danton. What should happen next with the French Revolution almost four years after the storming of the Bastille? Should it be transformed into a republic that gives people all the freedom to live their lives, be happy or starve? Or must the revolution continue as a dictatorship until social equality is finally achieved, even if the reign of terror still claims many lives by then?

DANTON'S DEATH, which is about the accusation, arrest and execution of the former revolutionary leader Danton and his followers by his former comrade-in-arms Robespierre, is about the devastation that violence leaves behind in victims and perpetrators, in thinking and feeling, how it leaves spaces, Possibilities and alternatives, freedom, equality, fraternity destroyed. And sisterhood especially. It is a perfidious and cruel game that the two opponents play with themselves and the community, the future, which is our past and present.

 

(Source: burgtheater.at)