
War and Peace / puts you in the hands of one of the world’s most notorious theatre collectives, Berlin’s Gob Squad, as they take on one of literature’s most famously unread novels. But this book club might come with a body count.
These theatre renegades make live video performances that unsettle the lines between the prepared and the improvised, performer and bystander, fiction and life. Here they set their sights on Tolstoy’s gargantuan opus War and Peace, only to discover that neither war nor peace are coming without a fight.
A never-ending parade of characters dance, dine and duel while performers prepare for scenes as if going into battle, all in order to reframe Tolstoy’s central inquiry: can we live a moral life in an imperfect world? Are our peaceful lives themselves a kind of warfare?
One man’s feast is another man’s famine, and this / is a feast of contradictions.
PRODUCTION PARTNERS AND SUPPORTERS
Presented by Malthouse Theatre and Melbourne Festival.
War and Peace is a production by Gob Squad and Münchner Kammerspiele. In coproduction with Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin, Schauspiel Leipzig, Konfrontacje Teatralne Festival Lublin, Lancaster Arts at Lancaster University, Malthouse Theatre and Melbourne Festival, Gessnerallee Zürich, Nottingham Playhouse and Teatro Stabile di Torino – National Theatre.
Key Image: Andrew Gough
Images: David Baltzer
CONCEPT /
Gob Squad
PERFORMED & DEVISED BY /
Johanna Freiburg, Sean Patten, Sharon Smith, Berit Stumpf, Sarah Thom, Bastian Trost & Simon Will
SOUND DESIGN /
Jeff McGrory
VIDEO DESIGN /
Miles Chalcraft
SET DESIGN /
Romy Kießling
COSTUME DESIGN /
Ingken Benesch
DRAMATURGY & PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT /
Christina Runge
TECHNICAL MANAGEMENT /
Chris Umney
ARTISTIC ASSISTANT /
Mat Hand
GOB SQUAD MANAGEMENT /
Eva Hartmann
Event & ticketing details
Accessibility
Performance Times
Event notes
DURATION /
1 hour, 45 minutes (no interval)