Jan-Christoph Gockel is staging the theater classic “The Tempest” at the Munich Kammerspiele by combining it with Werner Herzog’s “The Twilight of the World”. A conversation about why pure Shakespeare is no longer an option today.
Director Jan-Christoph Gockel creates exuberant worlds using the means of theater. Live music, puppets, actresses and actors, live cameras, lighting, stage design, also live drawings, artistry – he brings whatever is possible onto the stage. “I think if you buy a ticket, you deserve to experience something,” he says. Now Gockel, who is part of the Kammerspiele’s artistic management team, is bringing Shakespeare’s “Storm” to the Schauspielhaus and combining it with Werner Herzog’s novel “The Twilight of the World”. The book is based on real events: The Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda is sent to defend an insignificant Pacific island during World War II. The fact that the war ended passed him by for decades; he remained a lone fighter. But how does that fit with the “Storm”?