The jug is gone. Broken - but by whom? Kleist's comedy about the guilty village magistrate Adam conceals a highly serious dynamic: blackmail and sexual coercion are combined in a system of power imbalances and fear - against the gleaming backdrop of colonial expansionism. Who has an interest in the truth not coming to light - and for what reason? Is it really just a jug that has been broken, or is there not a much greater damage being negotiated in this courtroom play?

In his new work, director Philipp Preuss approaches this classic drama with a great deal of musicality and looks into the mechanisms of a system in which many are guilty: Kleist's historical background is the economically expanding Netherlands, which wants to secure the wealth the wealth from areas of present-day Indonesia by force of war - gained through the dubious methods of the world's first public limited company, the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC). Even more than the question of the jug smasher, the courtroom raises the question of life and death: will the innocent Eve succeed in saving her fiancé Ruprecht from the army, which will send him to a certain death in Batavia, now Jakarta? And who benefits from this system?

The social mechanisms that unfold with Kleistian humour and abysmal depth in the fictional village of Huisum are timeless...

Find out more and download materials for the production at the bottom of the page!

After the performance, we invite you to a discussion with director Philipp Preuss and the team!

A co-production with the FFT Düsseldorf. read less