The world in “The Red Room”

Libretto: Sasho Dimoski

The libretto of the modern ballet “The Red Room” is inspired by Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14, known as “Death and the Maiden”. Starting from the famous motive, which has had several stage and screen adaptations, the plot of the story is developed further: the Death, who longs for love and unity arrives among the people, falls in love with the Prophet, cuts his ties to the earthly world and brings him to the Underworld – the world of the Red Room. This initiaton of the Prophet has a double plot progress: in her quest of the Prophet and in attempt to bring him back to the earthly world, the Maiden begins her initiation journey. In the underworld, she succeeds in winning back her lost love and takes the Prophet back to the earthly world, whereas the Death remains alone, pining for her unity, surrounded by the solitude and emptiness of her own world. In addition to this triad, the other actors in the libretto are presented to the audience through certain states and feelings, rather than through characters and names. They represent the contrast: the earthly versus the under-worldly. On one hand, “The Red Room” is a stage experiment about the eternal love for unity and need for belonging, and on the other hand – it is a story about the solitude as the only form of absolute belonging, represented through the speech of a body in crisis.