How would life be without my wife? – Max Frisch in Salzburg
The team of the Salzburg State Theater is moving to other stages, due to the ongoing renovation measures at its venue. Unfamiliar prospects in changing times change perspectives, offer new possibilities or show limits. Just like in real life, which is known to feed the art of theatre. After “Carmen” in the circus tent and “Shakespeare in the pool” in the Paracelsus Bad, a five-person ensemble in the production by Marco Dott in the “Oval – Die Bühne im Europapark” premiered: “Biography: A Game” by Max Frisch.
Correct the biography afterwards
Even with his work, written in 1967, it was not easy for Frisch. The optimization attempt, its rewrite in 1984, did not improve it. “I meant it as a comedy,” he concluded, because it didn’t have the desired effect on the audience. In the work, the possibility or impossibility of man to change his identity is played, or rather played through. Key experiences recognized as missteps should be replaced by other actions or behavior in corresponding moments in life in order to change the course of fate: change the past with today’s knowledge.
“What happened if?” and “What if not?” As a game within a game, Max Frisch sends his protagonist, the behavioral researcher Kürmann (Christoph Wieschke), to undertake a daring self-experiment and gives him the chance to subsequently correct his biography. Kürmann would like “a biography without his wife Antoinette” (Tina Eberhardt). How would his life be without Antoinette? Can he optimize his life with it?
The spectators in the oval had the feeling of attending a theater rehearsal: a director (director Gregor Schulz) with an assistant (Elisabeth Mackner) and an assistant (Martin Trippensee) is working on a production, questioning in detail Kürmann’s actions and behavior and the possibility of varying them. Principles of cause and effect are analysed, things are mirrored, the course of the game is abruptly interrupted, resumed in a different way and sometimes discussed emotionally.
Nevertheless, despite all interventions in the past, in the end, albeit via detours, everything leads back to the same dilemma. Are these detours ultimately just shades of the same primary color?
The economical and changeable stage equipment (Matthias Kronfuss) allows the focus to be on the essentials: a table, two chairs or a sofa in the center as a playing field – less is more.
Brilliant acting
The ensemble acts in brilliant acting not at all sparingly in all emotional situations. Magnificent figure management, fast-paced play in all variations, tightly and unerringly guided over the (playing) field and at the end a flashed audience stimulated to think.
At the sight of a music box, Antoinette “metaphorized” at the beginning of the piece: “Figures that always make the same gestures as soon as it jingles, and it’s always the same roller, but you’re still excited every time”. Can these figures escape their role, i.e. be capable of other gestures, self-determined and free? “You have the choice,” says the game director to Kürmann. Could we “behavioral skinning” if we could turn our lives back? A really worthwhile theatrical mind game.Kirsten BenekamUntil December 30 at the Salzburg Landestheater im Oval, from December 6 at the Kammerspiele. at salzburger-landestheater.at or 0043/662/871512222