“When are we finally going hunting?”
On July 11, 2025, the Nibelungen Festival’s latest play, “Lake of Ashes” by Roland Schimmelpfennig, will celebrate its premiere. Before then, the ensemble will be busy rehearsing in front of and behind the scenes, starting on May 28, 2025.
It all starts with the reading rehearsal. As every year, the actors, author, director and crew members gathered to read the text together for the first time in front of the press. This day also marks the start of rehearsals. The team has a total of six weeks to bring the two-and-a-half-hour play to the stage. The creative team also gave a glimpse of the set and costume designs at this rehearsal start. Set designer Andrea Wagner had placed a model assembled with Lego bricks in a table display case. Next to the north portal of Worms Cathedral, the mighty sand dunes stand out. A video wall is installed on the left, which in turn is surrounded by plastic chairs, so to speak. At the center of the sand dunes is a lake filled with green water. As the first videos on Facebook showed, this may also be on fire.
“We tell the whole thing”
The centerpiece of this morning, however, was a first impression reading of the play, which was written by the renowned and much-performed playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig. To ensure that the press would not be distracted by flashing cameras and whirring cameras, the performance ended after just 15 minutes. Beforehand, director Mina Salehpour explained that she was delighted to have woken up in Worms and promised the press and ensemble, with a view to the author Roland Schimmelpfennig, that they would tell “the whole thing” this year. In other words: “We start with the slaying of the dragon and end with the showdown in Etzel’s hall. That was his idea, not mine.” Nevertheless, you shouldn’t expect a fairytale retelling. On the contrary, Schimmelpfennig’s Nibelungen are likely to be a little more abstract, as Salehpour’s reference to the role of Lindenblatt, played by Lisa Natalie Arnold, reveals. Or Jasmin Tabatabai, who has a double role as the dragon and Brunhild. “What could possibly go wrong?” asks the director with a charming smile, spontaneously describing a scene in which the leaf in a bikini takes a bloodbath and a sip of Prosecco to go with it. Well, cheers!
The man with the bloody fingers
This was followed by the entry into Schimmelpfennig’s Nibelung universe with a picture made of words, read by Andreas Grötzinger, who played the minstrel Volker. It is the image of a violinist (“The violin has only two sides left, the other two are torn, or are there three…”). The story of the violinist who plays “as if he were death” continues. “His playing, his song, becomes a woman, a man, a child, a sword,” reads Grötzinger. The tone becomes rougher, the mood more oppressive. “Fire. Short pause,” are Schimmelpfennig’s brief instructions in the manuscript and then: “The man with the bloody fingers, or the man without hands plays and plays, the string has cut his cheek to the bone,” reads Grötzinger breathlessly. “A man raises a sword and cuts off a child’s head, the boy’s head rolls across the floor”, reads Grötzinger before concluding with the words: “This is where the song ends, but the violinist’s song never ends (…)”.
Just a story
In the following scene, the monologue expands into a dialog in a convivial Burgundian setting. Gunter, Giselher, Hagen and Siegfried, who is already at court, listen to Volker. The violinist’s song is revealed as Volker’s tale in a cozy circle. Giselher is enthusiastic: “Go on, go on, play on, Volker, how I would love to be a part of your song myself.” Gunter also likes the song and demands more: “Keep singing about that queen high in the north, how I’d love to be the man at her side.” Hagen (Wolfram Koch) doesn’t share this cheerfulness at all and murmurs to the group: “When are we finally going hunting? I want to hunt, I don’t want to sit around in this dark hall any longer.” He is described in the manuscript as a tall, strong man with gray-black hair and only one eye. Siegfried, read in broken German by the Norwegian actor Eivin Nilsen Salthe, interjects boredly: “Hagen prefers the shadow to the light, because his father was a spirit of darkness, but the Tronjer doesn’t know that, Hagen never knew his father, the Tronjer is a bastard.”
The cast
For the cast, the artistic team has once again brought together a cast of renowned film, television and theater actors. At the top of the list of performers is a name that has already made a guest appearance at the Nibelungen Festival. This year, actress and singer JASMIN TABATABAI (57) is returning to the stage at the cathedral. The German-Iranian already performed in Worms in 2006 and 2007 under the direction of the late Dieter Wedel. At that time, she took on the role of Kriemhild in “Siegfried’s Wives” and “The Last Days of Burgundy”. In 2023, she returned to the festival with her concert program. Now she is back in the main play. As mentioned above, in a double role as the dragon and Brunhild. Tabatabai made her breakthrough as an actress in 1997 in the successful movie “Bandits”. Since then, she has successfully alternated between the theater stage and the camera. Most recently, she has often played the role of public prosecutor Sara Taghavi in “Tatort” (Berlin).
Many people will also know actor Wolfram Koch (63) from this series. He has lent his face and voice to the characters in countless “Tatort” episodes in a wide variety of roles. As popular as he apparently is with the “Tatort” producers, he is also popular in the theater scene. This has led to engagements at renowned theaters such as Schauspiel Frankfurt, Vienna’s Burgtheater, the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and now Worms. A real Kriemhild is also taking part this year, namely the actress Kriemhild Hamann. In recent years, the 28-year-old Hamann has mainly performed at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, where she has already worked with the director of “See aus Asche”, Mina Salehpour. She is also likely to have met Hans-Werner Leupelt there, as he is also a permanent member of the Dresden ensemble and worked with the director.
Born in Gothenburg in 1974, actor Andreas Grötzinger – like Koch – is likely to be familiar to viewers interested in crime dramas from numerous TV crime series. He recently appeared in TV series such as “Der Flensburg-Krimi”, “Großstadtrevier” and “Notruf Hafenkante”. Eivin Nilsen Salthe is a Norwegian actor and is likely to be rather unknown to German audiences. He has collaborated with director Salehpour on Norwegian theater stages. There he played in a performance of the play “Tschick”, based on the novel by Wolfgang Herrndorf, under Salehpour’s direction. Which role the actors will ultimately play in the play written by Roland Schimmelpfennig will finally be revealed on April 8, 2025 (we report).
The Nibelungen Festival takes place from July 11 to July 27
Further information about the play and the Nibelungen Festival can be found here: www.nibelungenfestspiele.de
Text: Dennis Dirigo Fotos: Andreas Stumpf
