In 1974 Dieter Roth self-publishes the book Murmel, a small brown-paper octavo volume comprising 178 pages. It is a stage play, he says. Then, – it must have been around the early 1980s – Herbert Fritsch comes across the paperback and is immediately enthusiastic about it. On one of the few occasions of casting for a theatre role at a German theatre (it must have been in Stuttgart), Fritsch reads Roth’s Murmel for the audition and promptly gets the job. Later on – it must have been still in the past century –, Fritsch promises Roth to stage the play some day. In 2012 he finally can fulfil the promise he made. Roth has been dead for quite some time – it must be 14 years by now. “I need to have 11 actors”, says Herbert Fritsch. Because 11, he says, is a crazy number. It is intangible and cannot be grasped, nor counted on ten fingers. Fritsch himself is going to be the twelfth actor … and then a thirteenth and fourteenth join in, mumbling:
Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel Murmel …
Duration: 1h 20min
With: Florian Anderer, Matthias Buss, Werner Eng, Ingo Günther, Jonas Hien, Simon Jensen, Wolfram Koch, Annika Meier, Anne Ratte-Polle, Bastian Reiber, Stefan Staudinger and Axel Wandtke
Director: Herbert Fritsch
Stage Designer: Herbert Fritsch
Costumes: Victoria Behr
Music: Ingo Günther
Light Design: Torsten König
Dramaturgy: Sabrina Zwach
