Chuck away your Ego!
by René Pollesch
This show does not represent any opinion. Otherwise it would be only one among many such shows. This show is actually the epitome of a theatre show. After having attended the show, you definitely won’t think: “Well, yes, one could see it that way, too.” Or: „How interesting, I’ve never perceived it that way, but Mr Such-and-such’s show yesterday has made me think differently.“ No! There is no Mister and no master, and we are not selling umpteen different thoughts. A fresh thought, too, is an opinion. And that’s what the show you are going to see in a moment is explicitly not. In what follows, there will be no battle of competing opinions. There can be no solution as long as there are still opinions competing against one other. Opinions which compete against each other are the opposite of struggle. When the hard thinking of the academic spheres strikes our bodies, the Streetcar named Opinion reaches the end of the line. You cannot ask a person for “a bit” of her or his phone number, because there’s no phone number then! It turns into a mere opinion. You cannot just dial “a bit” of a telephone number, because there will be only another opinion answering the phone at the other end. If there is any answer at all. Just as there’s no being “a little pregnant”, this is also just an opinion. But tonight, any comfortable thought is going to be distracted and disoriented long before it could turn into an opinion, so as to perhaps finally get to that which really affects us. There must be some way out of it! Out of the opinion making! Go for the opposite of freedom of opinion. Yet, being the lubricant it is, pluralism indemnifies itself by only allowing fresh ideas to develop, if they are readily recognisable as just one among many. ‘Cause everybody here put their pants on one leg at a time! Just the same way as everyone else. We all put our trousers on one leg at a time! And with everything else falling apart, at least our pricey corduroy pants bought at the Manufactum of opinions should last. Look, I’m putting my pants on the same way as everyone else! No! From now on, there is no putting the pants on one leg at a time! I don’t put my pants on like everyone! Oh well, you’re not supposed to say this, - say that the show tonight is the epitome of a theatre show, and so forth. And that’s what makes it so interesting – all that which is not talked about. All that is most certainly more important than that which is talked about, and the freedom of speech, or what you “mustn’t” say. It’s actually what they’re talking about all the time: “that which mustn’t be spoken about.”
So you are not listened to?? Are you saying anything at all? Sometimes something is surfacing when I meet someone for the first time in a long while and say: “Hello Christian!”, and the other one says: “Yes, I’ve changed, I know.” Then something surfaces, telling us: We have nothing. We don’t have any means to speak about our selves, apart from this phrase: “Yes, I’ve changed, I know.” The phrase bears witness to the weariness of people having to narrate their lives like books, with a beginning and an end. We have, however, no other tools. The tale telling of our coming-into-being has still to be invented. And all this is happening on any street at any moment - we find there’s nothing else left, there’s no narrative for our becoming, apart from this one answer to the question: “Hello Christian!” It’s not even a question, though. “Yes, I know I’ve changed”, that’s all. It’s enough. This excuse, the anxiety of being looked at, is all it takes. This perpetual anxiety. Which never stops.
With: Margit Carstensen, Christine Groß, Martin Wuttke, Jerry Hoffmann (Chor), Tim Fabian Bartel (Chor), Sarah Gailer (Chor), Silvana Schneider (Chor), Irina Sulaver (Chor), Marlon Tarnow (Chor), Marcus Tesch (Chor) and Paula Thielecke (Chor)
Choir: Christine Groß
Director: René Pollesch
Stage Designer: Bert Neumann
Costumes: Bert Neumann
Video: Ute Schall
Light Design: Frank Novak
Dramaturgy: Aenne Quiñones
Prompter: Tina Pfurr
