Saint Joan of the Stockyards

SAINT JOAN OF THE STOCKYARDS This famous, yet rarely staged (only once in Czechia) lehrstück is situated in the meat industry, depicting the onset of the economic crisis in Germany of the early 1930s. A text inspired by Schiller and Shakespeare has been significantly reimagined, reinterpreted and even gender-swapped by Dušan D. Pařízek. In the Brechtian polemic about machinations, free market and the folly of salvation, Pařízek seeks and finds parallels to the principles of contemporary financial business and the roots of (not only) the banking crisis and stock market crash of 2008. He has cast his traditional collaborator Stefanie Reinsperger as the ‘meat king and philanthropist’ Mauler and the team also includes Kamila Polívková and Peter Fasching.

 Pařízek’s long-time collaborator does not just reign over the meat, as her character’s nickname suggests, but over the entire production. A compelling presence visually straddling the line between Michelangelo’s Venus and Prodigy vocalist Keith Flint turns the actress into a raging maelstrom of energy. Considering the duration of the production – an hour and forty minutes, with a staged interval and a ten-minute second-half epilogue – this is an extraordinary performance. She delivers her lines practically in one continuous breath, speaking with maximum cadence and devotion to the concept. But it doesn’t mean the other actresses or their colleague are somehow overshadowed. No one, neither humans nor machines, fall out of absolute concentration.
MARTIN MACHÁČEK, Divadelní.net

The Austrian actress Stefanie Reinsperger is an element, a whirlwind: malleable, dazzling and able to play anything and go about her role with enormous commitment and with no regard for herself. In the Berliner Ensemble’s production of Brecht’s Saint Joan of the Stockyards, she plays the capitalist Mauler in a female version. She thus becomes the main character of the play and above all a magnificent new breed of manager who cleverly wraps her undying desire for profit in philanthropy and hypocritical blather.
JANA MACHALICKÁ, Divadelní noviny

DUŠAN DAVID PAŘÍZEK (1971) studied comparative literature and drama at the University of Munich and acting and directing at the DAMU Theatre Faculty in Prague. In 1998, when he was still a student, he founded the Prague Chamber Theatre, which operated at the Komedie Theatre from 2002 to 2012. The scene went on to win the Theatre of the Year award several times. In addition to a number of firsts in productions and premieres in the Czech Republic (of plays by Werner Schwab, Elfriede Jelinek, Peter Handke, and Thomas Bernhard, just to name a few), he also adapted works by authors such as Robert Musil and Franz Kafka there. Since 2002, he has directed a number of plays (for most of which he also designed the sets) in major theatres across Germany and Switzerland, including Schauspiel Köln, Deutsches Theater Berlin (a co-production with the Salzburg Festival), Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Schauspiel Hannover, Theater Bremen, Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, and Schauspielhaus Zürich. After his first directorial job in Vienna at the Akademietheater (The Ridiculous Darkness) in 2014, he staged his own adaptation of Hašek entitled The Schwejk Case in 2015 as part of The Vienna Festival in co-production with Prague’s Studio Hrdinů. In the 2015–2016 season, he staged his own adaptation of Thomas Bernhard’s Old Masters and Peter Handke’s Self-Accusation at the Volkstheater in Vienna, where he also staged Nora3 by Henrik Ibsen and Elfriede Jelinek, originally produced as a world premiere for Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf. In the 2016–2017 season, he staged Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools, also at the Volkstheater. In 2012, Pařízek’s production of J. W. von Goethe’s Faust 1–3 was invited, together with Elfriede Jelinek’s secondary drama FaustIn and Out (which premiered at the Schauspielhaus Zürich in 2012), to the Authorentheatertage Festival in Berlin and, in 2013, to the Theatertage Festival in Mülheim. In 2015, he was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen and the Theatertage Festival in Mülheim with his rendition of The Ridiculous Darkness, which premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 2014. The dark comedy was named Best Production of the Year, won Set Design of the Year in the critics’ survey of Theater Heute Magazine, and was awarded the 2015 Nestroy Theatre Prize for Best German-Language Production. In the 2017–2018 season, Pařízek staged the Austrian premiere of Ewald Palmetshofer’s Before Sunrise (a play based on the book by Gerhart Hauptmann) at the Akademietheater in Vienna. The production won the Nestroy Theatre Prize for Best Direction in 2018. In the 2018–2019 season, Iphigenia was his first work for the Schauspiel Bochum. The next season saw him direct, among other things, Chekhov’s Three Sisters in Bremen. His work can be perceived as a study on the relations within Central European countries and national identities, which remain very diverse despite their shared past, and whose national myths are in need of critical review. His King Ottokar’s Fortune and End (2019) opened at the Volkstheater with Karel Dobrý in the lead role. With the production of Zdeněk Adamec + Self-Accusation by Peter Handke at Theatre on the Balustrade, Dušan D. Pařízek returned to the Czech capital after many years as a theatre director and now works mostly with Prague’s X10 Theatre (The Moscoviad, All Quiet on the Western Front / Green Corridors). In 2024, he staged an adaptation of Pavel Vilikovský’s book Dog on the Road at the Slovak National Theatre (winning Best Director and Best Production of the season in the Dosky 2024 Awards and the Grand Prix at the Nová dráma theatre festival in 2025). In July 2025, his production of Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind premiered at the Salzburg Festival in a co-production with the Burgtheater in Vienna.

BERLINER ENSEMBLE was founded by Bertolt Brecht and his wife Helen Weigel in 1949. At first, the ensemble worked at the Deutsches Theater and on tours. In 1954, they moved to the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, where the Berliner Ensemble still operates today. After Brecht’s death in 1956, Weigel ran the theatre until 1971. It was only after the arrival of her successor Ruth Berghaus that the repertoire expanded to include other than Brecht’s works, the production of which in the Berliner Ensemble was widely considered canonical. Berghaus staged non-conformist directors such as Einar Schleef and Heiner Müller. Following protests by Brecht’s heirs and a decision by the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, she was removed from the management in 1977 and replaced with Brecht’s pupil and STASI agent Manfred Wekwerth, who ran the theatre until 1991. A year later, the Senate of Berlin entrusted the management of the Berliner Ensemble to five appointed stage directors (intendants): Peter Zadek, Peter Palitzsch, Heiner Müller, Fritz Marquardt and Matthias Langhoff. Alexander Frey became the music director (a position previously held by Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau, among others). Under their leadership, the Berliner Ensemble was privatised and converted into a limited liability company in 1993. After Müller’s death in 1995, a complicated search for new management began, leading to the de facto dissolution of the company in 1999. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the building had been acquired by a non-profit organisation led by the playwright Rolf Hochhuth, who had his own plans for it. Berlin government eventually settled the issue and in the year 2000, Claus Peymann took the helm of the restored Berliner Ensemble; he was succeeded by Oliver Reese in 2017.