Peter Pan by the Berliner Ensemble is a musical directed by Robert Wilson, with music by CocoRosie and stage play by Jutta Ferbers and Dietmar Böck.

According to the avant-garde visionary director, Peter Pan “ is a prism of very many personas, the dark sides of the character and the lighter sides, and how they somehow support each other. This is one of the failures of the Disney Peter Pan. It’s too light. Only when you’re in hell do you know where heaven is.” Wilson’s version features expressionist silent-movie characters with red punk hairstyles and malicious grimacing. The faces, frozen in typically Wilsonesque white make-up, show more of a life of their own than usual. His Peter Pan takes after David Bowie more than after a chubby-cheeked child, whereas the jealous fairy Tinkerbell is a man in a tutu with marceled blond hair.

With Peter Pan, the eternal child, the Scottish writer James Matthew Barrie has created one of the immortal myths of modernism. Few other texts have so profoundly influenced the imagination of entire generations such as Barrie’s who tells us about the fabulous and dreamlike journey to Neverland. Robert Wilson turns this daring universe filled with pirates, Indians, mermaids and children who can fly into a theatrical show full of inventions, supported by original music created by the American duo CocoRosie, and as usual by the splendid performers of the Berliner Ensemble company.

Text / James Matthew Barrie, Erich Kästner
Director, stage and lighting design / Robert Wilson
Music and songs / CocoRosie
Musical directors / Stefan Rager, Hans-Jörn Brandenburg
Costume design / Jacques Reynaud
Co-director / Ann-Christin Rommen
Stage collaborator / Serge von Arx
Costume collaborator / Yashi Tabassomi
Dramaturgy / Jutta Ferbers, Dietmar Böck
Arrangements / Doug Wieselman
Lighting / Ulrich Eh
Translation into German of the songs / Arezu Weitholz
Cast / Antonia Bill, Luca Schaub, Claudia Burckhardt, Anke Engelsmann, Johanna Griebel, Raphael Dwinger, Traute Hoess
          Boris Jacoby, Marvin Schulze, Christopher Nell, Stephan Schäfer, Martin Schneider, Sabin Tambrea, Jörg Thieme
          Felix Tittel, Georgios Tsivanoglou, Axel Werner, Nadine Kiesewalter, Joachim Nimtz, Gioia Brandenburg
          Winfried Goos
Musicians / Joe Bauer (Sound), Florian Bergmann, Hans-Jörn Brandenburg, Philipp Kullen, Jihye Han, Andreas Henze, Stefan Rager,
                 Ernesto Villalobos, Matthias Müller