Director Karin Lind is on the phone to her father. “Are you crying, Dad? No storm will knock us down. We can cope with anything.”

The celebrated director Erik Lind is due to stage William Shakespeare’s King Lear. He is now in hospital after suffering a heart attack. His daughter takes over his legacy in order to save his last great production. During stormy nights of rehearsals, she immerses herself in the story of the old King Lear and her own troubled relationship with her father.

Shakespeare tells the story of the once mighty Lear. Now he is old and weak. In order to reassure himself of his daughters’ love, they are asked to declare their affection for him before the inheritance is divided up. The price is the largest part of his kingdom. The youngest daughter refuses this competition: she loves her father Lear as a child should love its parents, no more, no less. This is not what the father wants to hear. Disappointed and angry, Lear rejects his youngest daughter. In confronting the subject matter of King Lear, Karin begins to doubt: how much does she owe her father, who was tyrannical in the past and is now terminally ill?

In his adaptation of LEAR, based on William Shakespeare’s 1606 tragedy King Lear, Falk Richter brings out the archaic images and poetic power of the classic and transfers them to the present day. How much suffering has the hubris of our fathers caused? How do we learn to be mindful and renounce our own privileges? Richter focusses on people who have to ask themselves anew about the possibility of self-knowledge, responsibility and forgiveness in the face of downfall. We are the product of our environment, our families and parents, they say. But to what extent does the contract between generations represent an inescapable legacy of our existence?

(Text by Benjamin Große)