1984

Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth and begins to secretly harbour doubts about the system. With Julia, he leads a forbidden double life that becomes an act of resistance, until the couple are betrayed, arrested and broken. In the end, Winston believes unconditionally in Big Brother.

Composer Rui Rodrigues and writer John von Düffel now bring Orwell’s nightmarish world into the 21st century, together with the fourth-year students of the Musical/Show programme at the University of the Arts.

What remains is the struggle against a system that forcibly standardises thought, language and reality. What changes is the perspective: identity, discrimination and the question of what is still real and what is not take centre stage for a generation that has grown up with precisely these struggles. The story is also retold in a new form, as the seemingly impossible resistance unfolds in two parts, from two perspectives: Winston’s and Julia’s.

1984 is a stage play in the tradition of the ‘dark musical’: sombre and dystopian in both content and aesthetic, yet distinctly pop-cultural, much like *Sweeney Todd*, for example. The fact that Orwell’s novel is once again regarded today as a pressing warning makes it all the more urgent to re-examine this material on stage, particularly with a young generation.