About the work
Das Narrenfest is a work of impromptu theatre created by Tom Witkowski, inspired by the painting of the same name by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It was created in 1994 and premiered on 3 September that year at Frankenberg Castle in Aachen.
Plot
With a prologue, twelve scenes and an epilogue, the piece stages a festival of fools and performers that Witkowski likened to a chain of soap bubbles. Motifs of transience, fragile glass spheres and soap bubbles, run through the multilingual, physically expressive performance of an ensemble of fool figures.
Cultural significance
The piece was restaged in 1996 as Comedia del Regio for the Charlemagne Prize ceremony honouring Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and again in 2013 as the European version Die Zugvögel at the European Culture Forum in Brussels.