by George Sand, German by Sébastien Jacobi
"You are still free."
Gabriel von Bramante grows up as a young man in baroque Italy, secluded from his family and surrounded by servants. As the future heir to the throne, he is brought up to be the model of a nobleman and is told early on that the world belongs to men. Gabriel's existence, however, harbors a great family secret that must be kept at all costs: Gabriel was born a girl and as such would have been excluded from the line of succession. Worried that Gabriel might fall in love and find out the truth himself, his grandfather reluctantly reveals the secret. Deeply disturbed by the revelation, Gabriel decides to reverse the consequences of the lie for the family history and regain sovereignty over his own identity, getting caught up in a maelstrom of passion, lies, love, intrigue and betrayal.
George Sand, who as an author herself had to struggle with the rigid gender morals of her time and published under a male pseudonym, hits a nerve in the current gender discourse after more than 150 years. "Gabriel by George Sand is a fantastic play about freedom. It has not yet been translated into German. That has to change!" wrote the FAZ in 2019. The actor and director Sébastien Jacobi translated Gabriel into German in 2021 and staged it at the Saarländisches Staatstheater. Director and stage designer Jakob Weiss, who most recently directed at the state theaters in Darmstadt and Karlsruhe and at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, among others, is presenting this tragedy of Shakespearean proportions to Schwerin audiences for the first time.
