About the production

Start

6:30 p.m.

End

8 p.m.

In her book »Passion«, originally published in 2020 under the title »Soif« (Thirst), the Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb imagines herself as a young man spending the last night before his execution on Golgotha: Jesus of Nazareth. Alone in his cell, he reflects on the path that led him there and on everything that will follow.

In Nothomb’s fictional inner monologue, Jesus speaks of his miracles, great love, betrayal and his overwhelming thirst for dignity and forgiveness. »Jesus has never felt so close to me,« says actor Götz Schubert of his feelings after reading this book. The monologue preoccupied him so deeply – indeed, gripped him so completely – that he adapted the powerful text for the stage. Schubert, who has long been a favourite of the people of Lusatia in the role of Görlitz police inspector Burkhard ‘Butsch’ Schulz in the crime series »Wolfsland«, thrilled audiences at the Lausitz Festival in 2024 and 2025 with his portrayal of Iago in »Othello / Die Fremden«. This year, too, he can once again be seen in a Shakespeare production (»Hamlet«).

In a unique performance format at the village church in Cunewalde, Schubert brings Nothomb’s Jesus to life with impressive vocal delivery and stage presence. Oboist and producer Manuel Munzlinger has created a soundtrack for the performance that combines electronic sounds with live oboe playing. The duo describe the evening as a MusicalRadioPlay, as it inextricably weaves together music, text and drama to form a multi-layered total work of art.

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Götz Schubert

Ever since the start of his career, Götz Schubert has impressed audiences and critics alike with his acting range and keen intuition for the roles he portrays. With a deep understanding of his characters’ idiosyncrasies, he always finds his own way of bringing out their fragility, humanity and humour, lending them a sense of realism and authenticity.

Theatre directors such as Alexander Lang, Amélie Niermeyer, Herbert Fritsch, Jürgen Gosch, Karin Beier, Peter Stein, Philipp Stölzl and Thomas Langhoff recognised early on his nuanced, masculine and sensitive portrayal of characters’ traits – through which he imbues them with a credible life of their own – and have repeatedly cast the actor in their productions. In film, he has won over audiences and critics alike in collaborations with Ben Verbong, Christian Schwochow, Edward Berger, Francis Meletzky, Isabell Kleefeld, Matti Geschonneck, Robert Schwentke, Till Franzen and Lars Kraume, with whom he has made many award-winning films over the years, such as »Das schweigende Klassenzimmer«, »Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer« and »Gott nach Ferdinand von Schirach« .

Schubert performs at leading German-speaking theatres, including the Berlin Ensemble, the German Theatre Berlin, the Maxim Gorki Theatre, the Residenz Theatre in Munich and the Theatre Hamburg, and has appeared in numerous high-calibre film and television productions since the start of his career, including »Der Turm«, »Meine Tochter Anne Frank», »Tage, die bleiben« and »Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter«, as well as in popular TV series such as »Die verlorene Tochter«, »KDD« and »Wolfsland«. He was voted Actor of the Year by the magazine »Theater heute«, has been honoured on several occasions with the German Television Award and the Grimme Prize, and was awarded the Audience Bambi for his acting performance. Götz Schubert is an ambassador for the German Palliative and Hospice Foundation and lives near Berlin.

Manuel Munzlinger

Manuel Munzlinger is one of the few oboists who not only master their instrument with virtuosity, but have given it a distinctive artistic voice. In his compositions, he combines classical precision with a pronounced sense of musical humour, and with technical brilliance and improvisational freedom expands the expressive range of the oboe far beyond its usual boundaries.

He first attracted attention with the project the oboe goes BaRock, in which he translated pop and rock music into classical sound worlds, creating a connection of stylistic refinement and musical wit that remains unusual to this day.

This was followed by concertos for oboe and orchestra that unite jazz and classical form, alongside chamber music and orchestral works. Through his agency mmmusic, he has for many years developed stage formats in which music does not accompany, but gives text and scene their own sonic dimension. A formative influence was his long collaboration with Herbert Feuerstein, with whom he shared the conviction that absurdity and precision do not exclude one another, but unfold their full effect precisely in combination. The Augsburger Allgemeine described his work as »depth combined with brilliant musicality.«