The Sandman

Venue: Chamber - What happens when perception and reality fall apart? Can we even trust our own eyes? E.T.A. Hoffmann's dark story about fear, projection, violent male figures and artificial people seems almost incredibly topical today. Together with Hungarian author Zsombor Aurél Biró, András Dömötör transfers the Sandman to the present day.

In childhood, Nathanael is frightened of the Sandman, who allegedly steals the eyes of children who don't want to go to sleep. When he has to testify how his father dies during mysterious experiments with the creepy lawyer Coppelius, he is certain: That was the Sandman. The horror of this man haunts him throughout his life and gradually merges with reality. His fiancée Clara is convinced that Nathanael can actively fight his demons: “As long as you believe in him, he is also and works, only your faith is his power.” Nathanael, on the other hand, believes that this is an illusion and believes “that every person, imagining himself free, only serves dark forces in the cruel game.” Only the taciturn and strangely expressionless Olimpia seems to understand him anymore.

In his adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann's masterpiece of Black Romanticism, director András Dömötör takes a profound satirical look at contemporary falsifications of reality, associations of men and nightsides of the human psyche.