Animal Farm

Old Major cleared his throat and began to sing. As he had said, his voice was hoarse, but he sang well enough, and it was a stirring tune, something bet ween “Clementine” and “La Cucaracha”. The words ran:
Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland, Beasts of every land and clime,
Hearken to my joyful tidings of the golden future time.

(Animal Farm, George Orwell)

Donkeys and horses, dogs and hens, ducks and pigs, cats and goats listen together on the straw in the barn to the legacy of the award-winning breeding boar Old Major.

What follows is a rebellion against old farmer Jones, and overnight the animals become their own rulers. All animals are equal. But which animals are more equal? The pigs, of course. Because they can even recite the alphabet from A to Z…

George Orwell’s analysis of the inevitable dynamics of totalitarian mechanisms, written in the mid-1940s, is frighteningly relevant today. His view of demagogues and tyrants, collaborators and followers, but also of the handling of true and fake news, the falsification of history, the exclusion of those who think differently and the behaviour of those in power seems highly topical. A piece of timeless world literature and a musical fairy tale full of grim humour.

Wilde & Vogel, Feisel and Comrades: this is a team of very different people with diverse forms of artistic expression. To stay with the image of Animal Farm: old pigs and young ducklings come together, some are better at reading, others are more persistent workers, one sews, another drums, the rest sing fervently in a choir. All of them together, under the direction of Michael Vogel and with a text adaptation by Janne Weirup, developed this production.

Wilde & Vogel, Feisel and Comrades in co-production with FITZ Stuttgart, T-Werk Potsdam and Westflügel Leipzig.