Georg Büchner

Leonce and Lena

Translated by:: Following Lator Lászlós translation

In the Popo empire, one can find utter boredom and emptiness; this doesn’t concern the dependents. This is a world with vegetating puppets, operated by rigid rules: they smile on command, laugh on command, yawn on command. They have no will. We don’t see independent people in the empire, just a crowd of helpless figures moved by a forgetful, narrow-minded ruler who can’t tend to himself. Leonce, the young crown prince, is running away from this world, the arranged marriage and from taking the power, just like Lena, the woman the people choose for him. He wants to escape this closed and empty world and choose freedom over the comfort with Valerio. It would be good to be someone else just for one minute. But is it possible to be someone else? Can we get away from our responsibilities and our set path? Leonce and Lena still try. They both run… From each other. Eventually, they bump into each other. For a second, they think they can choose and willingly choose each other. Then they find themselves face to face with what they were running from. Leonce's and Lena’s journey, which seems not to happen in space and time, ends as if they never left home. Something still occurs in the time passed: they are confronted with each other–and themselves–and even if they don’t grow up, they are at the gates of a new life where they must choose. This is a strange paradise, a burden, a responsibility, an exile, not that coveted happiness. The man and the woman are created there, and a few animals from the paradise are around them. Büchner’s Leonce and Lena is a fabulous story with twists, random encounters, surprises with travelled and not travelled roads and lots of humour, irony, questions and thoughts.

 

synopsis translated by: Vivien-Tamara Sárközi

Cast of characters:

Premier: 2011.04.02