MARIA STUART

Two queens locked in a struggle for power. With MARIA STUART, director Elsa-Sophie Jach stages a masterpiece of classical drama: a gripping political thriller about power and morality, passion and politics, dignity and betrayal. Between the imprisoned Scottish queen Mary Stuart and her rival, the English monarch Elizabeth I, a conflict unfolds that extends far beyond personal jealousy, touching on the fundamental questions of political responsibility. In Friedrich Schiller’s MARIA STUART, the decision over the life and death of a political prisoner gives rise to a fundamental conflict between power and justice.

In Elsa-Sophie Jach’s production, the creative team focuses on the question of what it means for a woman to exercise power within a patriarchal system. Mary and Elizabeth rule in a world in which female authority must constantly justify itself. Caught between imposed identities and self-assertion, both struggle for authority over of their bodies, their biographies and their politics. Could sisterhood have been possible under such conditions? Or does the system prevent any form of female solidarity?

Known for her political engagement with the present, formal clarity and analytical precision, Elsa-Sophie Jach combines in this production sensual lightness with precision, and great theatrical playfulness with a fine sense of rhythm. In her first production at Schauspielhaus Zürich, Elsa-Sophie Jach unleashes the full linguistic force of Friedrich Schiller. She places her trust in the power of the verse while revealing the text’s political fault lines: a drama of legitimacy and manipulation, fear and responsibility – urgent, resonant and uncomfortably close.