Director's Notes

"It started simply enough. Just a pulse in the lowest registers…"

Having greatly enjoyed each other's company in 2003 during the rehearsals and performances of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", the Anglo-Irish Theatre Group and the Provisional Players decided to launch a second co-production. As the choice was Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus", the two English-speaking student theatre groups at the Brecht-Bau met once more on "British ground".

The idea of performing the play began to loom in 2001 when "Amadeus" made its first appearance on my desk. Salieri, the "deluded old man", has been on my mind since then, both fascinating and appalling me. It is strangely disturbing to entertain shifting notions of a character. If nothing except his actions are taken into account, Salieri is surely not a good character in the Aristotelian sense. However, his addresses to the audience reveal something about him which exceeds mere wickedness. Admitting the malignity with which he upsets Mozart, Salieri gains sympathy. A criminal may sometimes attenuate his sentence by avowing his guilt. I think this is what Salieri achieves by addressing the audience. "You must understand me, not forgive." Shakespeare's Macbeth could have said so as well. It is a thrilling experience to explore the inner world of a villain, even more so if the rogue in question steps beside you during your contemplation and watches with you, equally horrified.

Mozart is another character with peripatetic traits. Oscillating between god-inspired genius and self-discrediting childishness, "Wolferl" stands for all those whom you believe to have pinned down, only to realize a second later that they have made away to demonstrate the contrary. Like Salieri, Mozart knows of his double nature: "My tongue is stupid. My heart isn't."

We tried to express the dual perspective of Mozart and Salieri by contrasting the silhouettes of these great men in the poster. Both have based their life upon music. They could switch positions any time, moving between passion and sedateness, rudeness and repentance, despair and hope.

What the actors and the crew of this production will certainly remember, apart from the beauty of the Kyrie or the exquisiteness of the Serenade for Thirteen Wind Instruments, is the following: an excessive consummation of biscuits, headed by the "Nipples of Venus"; an excavation of entombed Italian and French grammar; Mozart's transformation into a rubber boot in "You've got to get wolf, Welly"; and last not least:

"Well… there it is!"