Dhe Nuremberg painting student Wolfgang Herrndorf was a very unhappy person. He quarreled with the academy, with his professor, with his own art, which nobody around him wanted to understand, and dying in its old-master technique seems like a reactionary provocation to the 1980s. Having become a writer, Herrndorf twenty years later made a story out of motifs from this desolate time, “The Soldier’s Path”. Martin Brüggemann (director) and Lukas Schmelmer (dramaturgy) have now adapted it as a youth play for the Frankfurt Schauspiel: A one-hour, funny, but also text-heavy production in which Alicia Bischoff and Miguel Klein Medina make the characters of the story speak, they act on a reduced, divided stage, with economical props and available image and sound effects.

It tells the story of a nameless Nuremberg painting student who meets another applicant during the entrance examination at the academy, Franco Cosic, a Spaniard with Croatian roots (or not), who walks through the day as unsuspecting as euphoric about all the charms of the world – and whose artistic projects looked “like the Christmas bazaar of the Bodelschwingsche institutions. It was hard not to burst into tears.”

Formative phase of life

When Miguel Klein Medina slips into the character of Franco (with a wig), Alicia Bischoff speaks the narrator, the next moment they both speak him again, one dies ironically superior as if from a cabaret stage, the other with more body, more heart . In this way they break down the text into its parts of punchline and knowledge.

Two chance friends who go through a formative phase in their lives together until they separate again: “The Soldier’s Path” opened the short story collection “Diesseits des Van Allen-Gürtels”, which Herrndorf published in 2007, three years before his masterpiece ” Tschick”, three years before his cancer diagnosis. In August 2013, the terminally ill Herrndorf took his own life. Before his death, however, he was still able to experience the success of his novel “Tschick” as a play: for a short time, Herrndorf was the most-performed author on German stages (2nd place: Shakespeare).

sentimentality and coldness

Was the novel “Tschick” about two teenagers on road made so seductive and perfect as a youth play for all ages also shines through in “The Soldier’s Way”: Herrndorf’s sense of timing, his flawless prose, elegant in its sentimentality and coldness, and above all: his eternally youthful opposition to the mendacious falsehood and moral corruption of the adult world. And as in “Tschick”, the narrator is a close observer of his educational institution. A young person who somehow does, but then prefers not to belong to the society of other people – and who breaks down what he sees into punchlines and insights.

The fact that Bischoff and Klein Medina share this voice in the Frankfurt adaptation cleverly implements the Herrndorfian sound. Who is always both at the same time: sentimental and devoid of illusions. Warm and cold. In the middle and from far away.

Go now, feel!!!

The production puts the emphasis on the riddle of a friendship between Spinner and his chronicler – and on the absurd desire for artistic education: Once Alicia Bischoff, slipped into the role of the professor, yells at the narrator through a megaphone, what he is delivering is ” absolute shit”, he has to learn more: “Feel!!!” she yells into the device. Since the piece is aimed at a younger audience, this accent is also understandable. At its core, Herrndorf’s story was about what an “artist” actually is. What a picture he gives while giving pictures. Questions that Herrndorf himself occupied with throughout his life. Of course, because they’re about conformity, poses, and stubbornness, they’re also interesting for teenagers. When Bischoff and Klein Medina pose like sculptures on stage, dressed in Van Gogh T-shirts, this theme is also hinted at.

However, the autobiographical elements, and Herrndorf’s self-destruction, who at some point no longer wanted to be a painter but only wanted to be a writer and also hints at the reasons for this in this story, recede into the background. That is consistent in terms of dramaturgy, but also a bit of a shame. Something is missing, but it doesn’t matter: the audience in the sold-out box of the Frankfurter Schauspiel is enthusiastic.