Planned premiere: january 10, 2025.
Author Gilles Ségal, who was born in Romania and lived and worked in France, upon completing his play The Puppetmaster of Lodz exclaimed: “I wanted to write something light.” However, his work turned out to be anything but a lighthearted piece: its protagonist, who embodies the tragedy of the entire human race, is Samuel Finkelbaum, a world-famous puppeteer and a Birkenau survivor living in divided Berlin five years after World War II. Despite the efforts of many to convince him otherwise, he doesn’t believe that the war is over and that he no longer needs to hide. Thus, he spends his days locked away in a room with the puppets of his wife, who perished in the concentration camp, and of his child, who was never born as he prepares for the grand performance of his life, titled The Tragicomic Life of Samuel Finkelbaum.
The puppeteer’s alternate reality is framed by a classic “theater within the theater” setup, and by the arrival of a friend who might finally convince Finkelbaum that the war is indeed over. Or is it? The directorial work of Balázs Zoltán reveals the answers.
Director: Balázs Zoltán