Susanne Kennedy
Drei Schwestern (Three Sisters)

While society is in a state of upheaval, Masha, Olga and Irina persist in fear of their own finitude and fear that their lives won’t change. The classic «Three Sisters» is often interpreted as evidence of the decadence of pre-revolutionary bourgeois society. Again and again the protagonists are called onto the stage to see how they long to be able to escape their presence.

Susanne Kennedy wants to free the sisters from their unfulfilled longing and suggests a change of perspective: What if time is a circle and we will live every single moment of our lives again and again? For Nietzsche, the idea of eternal return meant always being ready — absolute affirmation. If, following Nietzsche, we lived as if we had to repeat life endlessly, would we make other decisions? Influenced less by the desire to control the future than by the desire for liberation?

Under the conditions of the pandemic, Kennedy’s view of the «Three Sisters» and their imprisonment in the repetition has become even more explosive. Without this horizon of meaning having already been taken into account when this production was created.

For several years now, Kennedy has been considered a «star of the German-language stage;» her premieres instantly rocket to the headlines of leading European festivals. Working in a post-humanist aesthetic, Kennedy looks to the phenomena of consciousness, artificial intelligence and a rejection of subjectivity. In her works, actors are alienated, deprived of their faces and voices. The director’s vision is augmented by masks, doppelgangers and a varied host of digital technologies.