Gerhart Hauptmann

Rose Bernd

Photo: Uroš Hočevar

Celje People’s Theatre

Première: 6 May 2016
Running time 1 hour 30 minutes. No intermission.

Original title Rose Bernd

Translator Mojca Kranjc
Director Mateja Koležnik
Dramaturg Nika Leskovšek
Set designer Marko Japelj
Costume designer Alan Hranitelj
Music selection and vocal coaching Simon Dvoršak
Choreographer Magdalena Reiter
Language consultant Jože Volk

Cast
Bernd Bojan Umek
Rose Bernd Liza Marija Grašič
Christoph Flamm Andrej Murenc
Mrs. Flamm Pia Zemljič
Arthur Streckmann Igor Žužek
August Keil Aljoša Koltak
Martin David Čeh
Labourers at Flamm’s Barbara Medvešček, Manca Ogorevc, Tanja Potočnik, Igor Sancin, Damjan M. Trbovc

Rose Bernd is presented under the license of Felix Bloch Erben Agency, Berlin, Germany.

The play Rose Bernd was performed for the first time in 1903 in Deutsches Theater in Berlin. The author was inspired by a true story of the fifteen-year-old child murderer Hedwig Otte.
Rose is a young girl torn between her desires and the expectations of others. She has been postponing her marriage to August Keil for over three years. Her father is very eager to see through that marriage as she would move to him and their existential ordeals would be solved. The married priest Flamm is having an affair with Rose on the pretext of having a sick wife. Rose falls in love with him. Streckmann hints to her that he knows what is happening between her and Flamm. It turns out that Rose is pregnant. She therefore decides to marry August although the child is not his. A chain of unfortunate events and the wickedness of envious people bring Rose to child murder.
The story of a young woman caught in a traditional and secluded environment and punished for her unconventional and socially unacceptable acts is a poignant depiction of the doom of a young woman who wants more from life than the society to which she belongs is willing to allow her.

"And yet the director Mateja Koležnik with her collaborators and the actors managed to create a brilliant production out of a fairly modest play, preserving through a thoroughly devised performing strategy the authenticity of the original, the freshness of relevance and a sense of thematic timelessness.”

Peter Rak, Delo, 10 May 2016