by Hugo Claus, based on Seneca | Translated from Dutch by Rosemarie Still | Interdisciplinary production
“I am a king, for I can die whenever I want.”
,Thyestes in *Thyestes*
A Family Story, based on the original sin of the forefather Tantalus, the resulting curse of the Tantalids or Atreides, and its effects on the grandchildren’s generation: Fearing that he might succeed to the throne, Thyestes and Atreus murder their half-brother Chrysippos. Then—rejected by their common father—they flee to Mycenae. The king there takes them in, entrusts them with the affairs of state when he goes to war, and dies on the battlefield. Whereupon a bitter power struggle erupts between the brothers, ending with Atreus’s sole rule and Thyestes’s exile. But the curse of the Atreides has not yet raged to its fullest: Years later, Atreus lures the exiled brother back under the pretext of fraternal reconciliation, and what happens next shatters the cosmic order. The sun turns away, the day gives way to darkness, and the future already suffers from the continuation of the horror. “So it was. And it will be no different,” lament those who are peace-loving. “The mighty wheel turns in vain through time—think of the families tearing each other apart, of palaces burned to the ground, of kingdoms vanishing like dew, of the gods who are ever silent, ever fleeing.”
Joanna Lewicka, Schwerin’s new director of drama, has worked in Germany, Poland, and Cambodia, among other places. Her production of *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* was named the Cultural Event of the Year 2012 by *Gazeta Wyborcza*; she received, among other honors, the Polish Stanisław Hebanowski Prize “Klasyka Żywa IV,” was nominated for Best Music Theater Direction in Poland in 2020, was a fellow of the Berlin Senate and the Polish Ministry of Culture, received a research grant from the Performing Arts Fund, was featured in the Polish Dance Platform in 2022 and 2024, and was awarded the German Theater Prize DER FAUST in 2024 for her production of *Antigone* at the Theater Plauen-Zwickau.
She will open the 2026/2027 season with Hugo Claus’s *Thyestes*, based on Lucius Annaeus Seneca, whose ancient tragedy sought to condemn atrocities such as human sacrifice, cannibalism, and intrafamilial bloodshed—and—still relevant today—tells of the devastating consequences of these horrors.
