DOSENFLEISCH / CANNED MEAT
Direction: Clemens Bechtel
With: Tatiana Sessler-Toami, Olga Török, Franz Kattesch, Richard Hladik
One evening, Rolf, a motor insurance inspector, stops at a gas station on the side of the highway. From there, he can observe the stretch of road where an unusually high number of accidents have been occurring lately. To his dismay, the nosy gas station clerk, Beate, keeps approaching him, rambling on with bizarre remarks.Trying to avoid her, he meets Jayne, an actress wandering through the same rest stop. Fascinated by her, Rolf cannot shake the feeling that he knows her from somewhere. As he struggles to sort out his thoughts, strange things begin to happen at the station, and the atmosphere grows increasingly ominous. dosenfleisch is Ferdinand Schmalz’s second play and was invited to the Mülheim Theatre Days in 2016. It is an unconventional detective story in which the playwright tackles themes such as the ecological and social impact of infrastructure development and the impersonal relationships between people in a perpetually hurried world. These themes are explored both in the characters’ reflective monologues and in the epic passages of the long-haul truck driver, the character who partially narrates the action.
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GERMAN SONG NIGHT
With: Dana Borteanu, Roxana Ardeleanu
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LIEBE / LOVE
Direction: Irisz Kovacs
With: Isa Berger, Enikő Blénessy, Daniel Ghidel, Aida Olaru, Alma Diaconu/ Silvia Török
Recently settled in Germany, the writer Olivia and the ever-in-the-making director Popeye meet at a German language course and begin what seems to be a fairly ordinary love affair. Despite the language barrier and the ten-year age difference between them—he being the younger one—the lovers go on dates, move in together, and build a life side by side. However, in their seemingly uncomplicated and conventional story, problems begin to surface—problems that only one of them appears to notice. LOVE / An Argumentative Exercise invites us to peer almost secretly, as if through a window, into the couple’s life of Olivia and Popeye, characters shaped after the beloved animated archetypes. Through an ironic analysis of patriarchal structures, the status of the artist, and a deep dive into Olivia’s inner world, playwright Sivan Ben Yishai’s text explores how people who appear rationally aware of these social structures can nonetheless fall, in their personal lives, into the very patterns they publicly criticize.
