The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

In the centre of the play The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is the self-confident fashion designer Petra von Kant, who lives with her assistant and maid Marlene. Marlene fulfils Petra’s orders without complaining and puts up with all of her insults and caprices. When Petra falls in love with the charming Karin, the latter immediately finds herself at the top of the hierarchically organised trio. Petra wants Karin for herself only, while Karin wants to use the wealthy Petra.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the self-proclaimed enfant terrible of the German cinema is one of the few directors often featured on the front pages of tabloids. In 15 years, he made more than 40 films (many now considered classics, amongst them: The Merchant of Four Seasons; The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant; Ali: Fear Eats the Soul; The Marriage of Maria Braun and the monumental Berlin Alexanderplatz based on Döblin’s novel) and wrote several plays and novels. In his works, he tried to disclose the duplicity of German bourgeois society from which he – also because of his homosexuality – always felt excluded. He was accused of misogyny, betrayal and anti-Semitism, and the play The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant was labelled homophobic and misogynist. Most studies on Fassbinder focus on his controversial personality and speculate about his intimate motives for such ecstatic productivity. In 1996, Thomas Elsässer published the first thorough analytical study about Fassbinder’s work in which he primarily emphasised the extraordinary broadness of the characters and human emotions and the panoramic breadth of all social milieus and classes.
A drama of sensitive and at the same time wild characters was directed by one of the best-known French directors, Arthur Nauzyciel. He is the winner of many French and international awards and has been the director of the Centre Dramatique National Orléans/Loiret/Centre in France since 2007. His performances tour all over the world, but his creative residence in Slovenia was his first in this part of Europe.

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