GEISTERSTÜCK - Stückeinführung 19:30 Uhr
World premiere by Fabienne Dür
A shopping center that could be located in any city, a ghost train that has seen better days, and three characters unable to move forward or backward: that's the "Geisterhaus." Step right up!
Marina wants to pursue a PhD, can't find a scholarship, and thus ends up as a ticket collector in the ghost house. Sunny, the live scare actress, is stuck not only in this job but also in an ex-relationship. Boris, known as Boss, runs the ghost house – and doesn't understand why only school groups and bachelor parties come by. Every attempt by Marina to improve the ride is dismissed by Boss – after all, it's a long-standing family business. Whether that's true quickly becomes questionable – as do other certainties of the characters. Are they really stuck here, or are they just afraid to take the step into the unknown?
With quirky humor, eccentric characters, and a fine sense of situational comedy, Fabienne Dür's new piece tells of a collective paralysis: Are we letting our fears guide us? Or can we muster the courage – despite all the crises – to look hopefully into the future?
Created as part of the playwright residency in the 2024/25 season, funded by the Baden-Württemberg Foundation.
Featuring: Johanna Engel, Stefan Herrmann, Jel Woschni
Direction: Tobias Schilling
Set Design: Birgit Angele
Dramaturgy: Dr. Stefan Tigges
Scene Photos: Tobias Schilling
At 8 PM, Introduction at 7:30 PM
Venue Löwen, Kornhausstraße 5
NOTE
The performance includes some light effects that resemble strobe lighting. Additionally, cigarette smoke, fog, and brief passages with increased volume are used.
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WHAT THE PRESS SAYS
Elisabeth Maier - Theater der Zeit
“Gigantic black plastic balls pull the audience into a world of horror. […] Here, skulls and bloody rubber hands in Tobias Schilling's staging of “Geisterstück” awaken the desire for a pleasant shudder, but the text goes much deeper. The people playing this time-warped fairground attraction are consumed by fears of the future. In the ghostly world, they play a role. In the former cinema "Löwen" in Tübingen, the second venue of the Zimmertheater, Angele astonishes the audience with a room of fear. The set design spectacularly showcases the great milieu and character portraits crafted by the author. […] Dür is one of the intelligent, socially critical voices of her generation. In “Geisterstück,” she looks behind the trendy facade of failed dreamers. They want to escape the stale air but cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. Fabienne Dür's strength lies in deftly and sensitively tracing the development of her characters. It’s particularly difficult to grasp Boss, whose first name is Hugo, the chief and live scare performer, with his macho behavior. In a Dracula costume, Stefan Herrmann fulfills all clichés. The actor draws on his full comedic potential. Over time, however, his life lies peel away from him like scabs. The actor masterfully manages this balancing act. Fear is the strongest feeling that this man knows.
Frustrated with life is Marina, who has fallen from being a hopeful student to a ticket seller. Against the “lawyer kids and youth-debating assholes,” she feels she has no chance, she says in frustration. Johanna Engel's voice sounds darkly shadowed when she speaks of the squandered perspectives. And of the suppressed everyday fears of school shooters or accidents. She beautifully captures Dür’s full, sensitive language: “I don’t even know where these images come from, they aren't mine, but I can't get them out of my head.” […] Woschni beautifully dreams herself into the unfulfilled longings of the live scare actress. What it means to lose one’s own identity with work is shown by Sunny's desperate torn nature. The character embodies a generation that, in light of the climate crisis, has lost faith in the future.
With the three strong actors, director Tobias Schilling also captures the deep layers of Fabienne Dür’s text. The journeys that her characters undertake into their own subconscious have something magical about them. The director explores this surreal dimension in the realm of the undead. When Sunny strides through the space with glittering stylized angel wings, the audience senses hope and a sense of departure that has long been absent in a world of consumer terror. “Geisterstück” in Schilling's premiere is not merely the eerily beautiful story of three people yearning for a different life. In the ghost train, Fabienne Dür negotiates a generation's fears of the future, one that doesn’t want to be the last.”
Schwäbisches Tagblatt - Peter Ertle
“Hell! What a stage set! The entire Löwen (rooaaaaarh!) lined with glittering silver paper (set design: Birgit Angele), a colorful bouquet of bloody atrocities screams at you from the bar, dark balloons loom above like creeping vines, below a track, a cart on it, like in the deepest depths of coal mining. […] One would want to leave there immediately, yet also not, because everything has a trashy, black-humorous, fairground-suitable side in this Horror Picture Show. […] The piece thrives on wordplay, clowning, insights into the crumbling lives of the protagonists, their relationships with each other […] Here, Tobias Schilling's production achieves a few great moments in the small, such as a greeting scene between Boss and Sunny, a brief burning mirror that tells more than a longer dissertation about their relationship could. […] The present certainly haunts and toils more than it lives, quirky, comical, among live scare actors, Grim Reaper costumes, bloody hands, and one-legged trousers, with dialogues that are tired and cool, delicate and disturbing – and now and then tear a deep hole in which fear, longing, or a thick question mark find their place. […] Just like in real life, out there, where we sit, those of us who also have an out there. Theater probably works the same way, as a funhouse mirror of different rooms, where it’s neither certain nor even important what is real and what is fictional, or what reflects in what. But whether the whole thing entertains us and seems to tell us something about ourselves.”
Reutlinger Generalanzeiger - Thomas Morawitzky
“Is there a better place for real horror than a shopping mall? […] A strange in-between place, inhabited by strange characters. The Boss is also active in the ghost train as a “live scare actor,” but primarily, the task of scaring people is assigned to Sunny, specifically hired for this purpose, in a Grim Reaper costume. Her job is to scare people, yet she is stuck in a bad relationship, afraid to venture out into life. Jel Woschni plays this character timidly, broken, full of defiance. […] Birgit Angele has designed a stage for the “Geisterstück” that truly resembles a ghost train: Long silver curtains hang from the ceiling, silver steps rise up, large black balloons fill the background, in which a spooky apparition occasionally appears, and in front, train tracks run, disappearing into the dark. […] The “Geisterstück” short catalog of macabre gags, quirky rhymes, speaks also of real horror, blending sadness and comedy. Above all, it is interested in the quirky characters seeking refuge in the place of unreal terror, their dreams, hopes, and brokenness, evoking sympathy for these outsiders. Only in the end does the Tübingen production allow itself the pleasure of instilling a mighty fright in its audience.”
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