This alarming photograph is a still from Richard Teschner’s puppet theater production of Nachtstücke, or ‘Night Pieces’ by the German composer Robert Schumann. The Nachtstücke was written in four parts, inspired by the death of Schumann’s brother, with the last piece descending into cacophony mirroring the composer’s own declining mental health. This scene may be from part 2, The Queer Assembly, or part 3, Night Revelry. Teschner named the monstrous figures that haunt the two somnolent women, calling them from left to right: the meaty one, the listener, and the yellow one.
