In May, the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus will bring Orwell's novel »1984« to the stage as a co-production with the Schauspiel Stuttgart. Writer and director Armin Petras directed, Christian Friedel, known to the Düsseldorfers from "The Sandman", played "Big Brother" and wrote the music with his band "Woods of Birnam". Nobody trusts anyone in the Orwell state of Oceania. It is the "big brother" totalitarian surveillance state that operates with an omnipresent teleshield, social control and thought police. By means of "new speaking" people are stopped from thinking, political opponents are "vaporized", the memory of earlier times is erased. What is called true is true. Winston Smith, a member of the outer party, hates this system. That he begins to write a diary in this world as a document of history and message to the unborn is his death sentence, and he knows it. The fact that he falls in love with his colleague Julia and makes her his ally does not change this, but it gives him the maximum possible life. Winston doesn't stand a chance. Ultimately, he too will know: "Two plus two is five". Orwell's novel, which emerged in 1948 as a literary answer to National Socialism and Stalinism and owes its title to the rotation of this year, always gains in importance when open society is at stake. Petras works in Düsseldorf for the first time and, with »1984«, simultaneously closes his artistic director in Stuttgart.