When Alexander von Bernus opened his shadow theatre in 1907 in the artistic neighbourhood of Schwabing in Munich, he wished to present a new form of art, which he explicitly connected with the Romantic tradition. This new form of art would be different from the shows of the Chat Noir cabaret in Paris and make better use of the immaterial quality of shadows to venture into the realms of the soul and of dreams. Mysticism pervaded the intellectual and artistic circles of Munich at the beginning of the 20th century, and it had something to do with this project too, since it aimed at “the most metaphysical union of image, poetry and music”.

The very short play Vormitternacht (Before midnight) serves as a manifesto: it fits perfectly in what Alexander von Bernus wrote in the leaflet which presented the play during the first season of its performance, in which he described shadow theatre as “this immaterial world of waking dreams” (“die entmaterialisierte Welt der wachen Traüme”).

In the first edition, the play was preceded by a prologue entitled “der Dichter”, in which a poet conversed with a bird (actually a woman who had been changed into a bird). This prologue was not taken up in the following editions.

A sick man has visions; under the watchful and worried eye of his chambermaid, he talks to himself and believes that he is seeing a woman and a masked ball. A woman dozing in her living room has a fever dream in which she sees the man she has loved. Her daughter, who is looking after her, struggles to bring her back to her senses.