Jaunimo Teatras will open its 60th season with the premiere by one one of the last active European theatre Mohicans of his generation Krystian Lupa’s adaptation of the novel by Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain. For this production, the director has assembled an international team of creators and a large ensemble of actors.
The Magic Mountain will premiere at the Salzburg International Festival on August 20th. 5 performances will be presented to the audience at the historic Salzburg Landestheater. One of the world’s most authoritative forums for the performing arts is also the co-producer of the production of The Magic Mountain. Much awaited, The Magic Mountain will close the drama program of this year’s festival. The tickets to all the premiere shows have almost been sold out. Lithuanian premiere of The Magic Mountain at Jaunimo Teatras will be held on September 20th and 21st.
Thomas Mann began writing The Magic Mountain as a satirical short story for a magazine on the eve of World War I but stopped working because of the war. He later admitted that the war had enormously enriched the content of the book. It was only after the war that the writing of The Magic Mountain really began and took on a completely different scope. The novel did not appear until 12 years later, in 1924. Calling The Magic Mountain his life’s work, the closest thing to his own personality, Thomas Mann said that the novel most closely embodied the leitmotif, the magic formula that links the past to the future and the future to the past.
Journey is the key word when talking about Krystian Lupa’s creative method. It is a journey into the unknown based on exploration and collective work trying to penetrate the mysteries of a work of literature and the human psyche. In the case of The Magic Mountain, it is, first and foremost, a journey into the personality of Thomas Mann himself and his secret relationship with the character of Hans Castorp. For Lupa, it is important that Mann did not walk the path of his hero, but he wanted to walk it, so he had to design it for himself based on other people’s experiences and literary sources. This journey of writing for Mann became more real than his real family life, concealing his furtive passions.
According to Krystian Lupa, it is important for him to convey in the play what The Magic Mountain meant to Thomas Mann himself and to the world in which it was created. As well as to reflect the circumstances of the play’s creation. Lupa thinks the performance should have two acts. In the first act, we would see the world before the war, and in the second – the world already affected by the trauma of the war. Through the dramaturgical contrast of the two acts, the director aims to show the evolution of the world from the 19th century manners and the optimistic faith in human reason and new technological discoveries of the early 20th century, to the collapse of all illusions and the deep anxiety about the future of the world…
The Magic Mountain is Krystian Lupa’s third production in Lithuanian theatre. Thanks to Lupa, Lithuanian theatre spectators are discovering a new world of theatre and the literary continents of Thomas Bernhard, W.G. Sebald as well as Thomas Mann. It is one big journey encouraging its participants to explore new ways of theatrical storytelling and to raise fundamental questions about human beings and the challenges of theatre in our times.
The performance is produced in collaboration with the Salzburg Festival.
