NATHAN THE WISE. Director Armin Petras

With one single gesture of tolerance Nathan a wise Jew from Lessing’s play stands up for a respectful, free from the prejudices existence of all religions. At the end of the play we find out that the Jewish girl Reha is Nathan’s adopted daughter, the Christian Templar and the Muslim Saladin are in fact members of one family. With this dramatic twist Lessing manages to reconcile the religious conflict and create a new unity in this family union.

This solution, however, is temporary. Lessing’s solution can not withstand the bitter reality. In those days, as now, the religious perceptions of the world are confronting one another, causing terror and violence. Is Lessing’s ‘Nathan” - а masterpiece of the German Enlightenment – just a utopian philosophic play?

This international co-production overlooks the causes of conflict and the possibilities of adapting these enlightenment ideas of our time. In this mixture of different languages – each actor speaks his | her native language – we may see a political and private struggle, a search for identity. Understanding is the key to a peaceful co-existence, incomprehension will result in war and Babylonian chaos. This play is performed by two actor groups (an international mixed cast consisting of members of the National Theatre Radu Stanca Sibiu and the Stuttgart Drama Theatre, and a cast of the Stuttgart Drama Theatre alone). Performance with subtitles.

The lobby of a hotel set somewhere in southern Europe – where all meet to talk about love, religion and business. This place is destined to blow up. An explosion occurs, then fire and destruction ... when suddenly comes a man with a suitcase full of money – a businessman, a father and a Jew – he is trying to deal with the traumas of the past with calculations, lies and love. And in the end he loses in this game with life. This man is Nathan.