Der gestiefelte Kater (Puss in Boots)

Ludwig Tieck was way ahead of his time with his masterpiece written in 1797: in his hands the fairy tale of a puss in boots becomes an absurd and comic »play within a play« that leaps joyously across the borders of theatre and reality. 

While the cat Hinze helps the youngest of three miller’s sons achieve wealth and love, Tieck also allows a fictional audience to take a seat on stage. Its constant interventions drive the fairy tale ensemble mad and threaten to bring the performance to a premature end. Tieck pushes the interplay between illusion and reality, between fiction and truth in the play so far that not only the fictional audience but also the real one cannot help but wonder: are we still watching this or are we now part of the action? 

In his own adaptation, resident director Alexander Eisenach rediscovers this long forgotten key work of German Romanticism for the stage – as a satire on the staged realities and digital filter bubbles of our age.  In a world where algorithms decide what we believe is true, Tieck’s Romantic irony is more topical than ever: with it, he encourages us to maintain our distance and to recognise reality as a construct of roles and masks behind the facade. Or, in Tieck’s own words: 

»Have you ever tried to take jokes seriously and to treat seriousness as fun?«