Dem Herz die Arbeit, den Händen die Liebe

Who doesn’t know London’s famous doctor and scientist, who is temporarily turned into a perverted monster by a drug?
Playing with dread and the grotesque, Robert Woelfl has penned an ironic and light variation of the famous horror classic in his stage adaption.
“I am Jekyll and Hyde. No. I am Doctor Jekyll and Hyde. I am Doctor Jekyll. And Edward Hyde, too… if I’m Jekyll, I’m not Hyde. When I am Hyde, I can’t be Jekyll. And the other way around. Of course, if I am Jekyll, I am also Hyde. No. Jekyll is Jekyll. And Hyde is Hyde. But Jekyll is also Hyde. No. Jekyll becomes Hyde. When Jekyll has become Hyde, then Jekyll is Hyde. When Hyde becomes Jekyll again, then Hyde is Jekyll. Of course. Jekyll can only be Jekyll and Hyde can only be Hyde. Even when Jekyll is Hyde. And the other way around. No. I am Jekyll. Doctor Jekyll. Doctor Jekyll. Always Doctor Jekyll. Yes. I am Hyde. Edward Hyde. But I’m also Jekyll… Doctor Jekyll. Doctor Jekyll. Always Doctor Jekyll. And he is Hyde. Edward Hyde. He is Edward Hyde, for sure. He says he is Edward Hyde. He says I am Edward Hyde. I am Hyde. He says I am Jekyll. Doctor Jekyll. Doctor Jekyll. Always Doctor Jekyll. He says we are Jekyll and Hyde.” (Dr. Jekyll)

“You were alone. You felt alone. Someone hurt you. I will never hurt you.”

The hedonistic society is letting off steam. Sex makes you happy, pills make you cheerful. Love is a nuisance and it hurts. Alex loves craziness. Limits are made to be transgressed. There are victims, but who cares. Julian loves Katrin. And against the advice of his friend Alex (“Forget about that shit”) he promises her eternal love. But Karin lives for the moment and soon can’t stand him anymore. She prefers Alex, who doesn’t get so clingy. Experimental sex and ultimate thrills. Alex resists commitment and still helplessly falls for Katrin. Katrin misses Julian and longs for the closeness of her long-time neglected sister Silvia. But Julian and Silvia hesitate more than expected. In the end, Katrin leaves Alex to be with Julian. But now, he rejects her…
A play about lonely sexuality and the phantasms of love.
Wahrheit was commissioned by the Staatstheater Stuttgart.

Sebastian and Finn, programmers from Stuttgart, and Zoe and Josh from San Francisco, who are programmers as well, meet in the desert of Nevada at a place known as “The Springs of Immortality”. Allegedly everyone who comes to this loneliest place of the desert is rewarded with a brilliant idea. All great programmers and internet businessmen have supposedly been here before.
“Abundance Desert” is about artificial intelligence, the German car industry and the promise of immortality, and how it all comes together in one place in the Nevada desert.

In Familien Unternehmer Geister, Robert Woelfl continues his series of plays about the world of work and the economy – and now turns his focus to the topic of family businesses.

"Take over the company already.”

Michael, the father, is the second generation to lead the business. And he wants his son, Jannis, to take over the day-to-day activities. The banks only want to give a sorely needed loan (which could save them from bankruptcy) if the succession is arranged and an energetic manager will implement the needed changes.
Only Jannis refuses, he doesn’t want to take over the company, doesn’t want to make a meaningful contribution to society. He doesn’t want to take over mountains of debt, he doesn’t want to attempt suicide, as his father did multiple times. Truth be told, Jannis only wants to go boating on a racing boat.
In his opinion, his sister Leonie could take over the company. But Leonie doesn’t see that as her place in the family. “I think and feel as an heir… I endorse inheriting and going extinct.” Jannis’ mother Katja also doesn’t understand him. “I wanted to be hated and envied. Seeing how the people around us were eaten up with envy always made me happy.”

In a grotesque sequence of scenes, Robert Woelfl shows how nothing works anymore in this family business and in this business family, and how they assert themselves as a self-sufficient system against all odds.

"Take over the company already.”

There’s no harmless beginning: tragedy doesn’t develop anymore – it is present without being sensed as such by its victims. Even in the beginning, the characters who are couples provoke each other with tooth and nail – but they are blunt and slow. Provocation is crude, loud and sharp – he who provokes has a brief moment of pleasure, he who is provoked lets everything bounce off, contradicts indifferently, without resistance – an escalation is unthinkable.

Squabbling – back and forth – along the waterside promenade. Roland is obstructive: before pouring gasoline over himself and lighting himself on fire, he forces Waltraud and Walter to stick their faces in a rotten dog corpse, slays Sabine and throws the angler (who still got the opportunity to get off on top of her corpse) into the deep, stinking river.
All of this happens without excitement, as in passing – everyone is involved, but no one takes part. The dirt can be brushed off, the characters don’t feel disgust anymore, not towards each other and not towards themselves. And so, the “glorious afternoon” ends while eating a trout, filled with parsley and dill.
“I’ll slay you one day”
“I think I’ve never given you a reason for that”
Weariness: they are a burden for each other and themselves and can’t move even a centimetre. They are always talking, but no word coming from the enlarged mouths is of use.

Line has fallen in love with a house. But it’s not any house she has fallen for, it’s the new company building. She wanted to quit because her employer is exploiting her, but now she’s addicted to the company building.
Others try to talk her out of it. “You’re making the wrong connections” says Alice. Or “that doesn’t fulfil your desire for romance” says Tom. But Line can’t be convinced: “this architecture is so sexual. This building is charged with sex. I love this building and I want to sleep with it.”
Since Line has fallen in love with the building, she is now terrified of being let go. “I wanted to quit the whole time, and now I’m scared the company could fire me”, Line says. “You’re key personnel. You won’t be fired”, Tom replies. But the unthinkable happens: Line is fired. The company’s sudden decision to let her go is as crazy as her love for the building. For security reasons, she’s not allowed within one hundred metres of the building. And so, she stands on the parking lot every day, looking at the company building…
The play is about confusing work with love. And about defining love as a potential last resource. The power of love is alienated. Feelings, spaces, needs which used to be separated from the area of work are drawn into this domain. So that it can all run even better.

Once a liar, always a liar... Jan Maršálek, wanted internationally for accounting fraud and embezzlement amounting to billions, is suspected of having lied frequently and extensively. Now he is returning from Russia to his mother and sister in the house where he grew up. Why? Out of remorse and to ask for forgiveness? Can so many lies ever be forgiven and can so much guilt ever be forgiven? And what about the lies we ourselves have been so willing to believe and will continue to believe in the future, the lies about brilliant entrepreneurship, about the best company ever, about the European Silicon Valley, about immeasurable success and infinitely rising stock market value? A computer nerd, school dropout, business star, luxury fanatic, adventurer, fraudster and spy asks his mother and sister to take him back home. But they have something else in mind.

‘I want to get up in the morning again and
put on a fresh white shirt and
talk to my friends about company takeovers and
stand on a rooftop terrace and smoke cigars and
invent new company names that sound as beautiful as
the name of a rare bird from the jungle.’

Man insists on aesthetics. Beautiful woman, beautiful man, beautiful couple, beautiful relationship, beautiful beauty. But it doesn’t stay like that, especially during intercourse. During real intercourse. During the animalistic kind of coitus. During fucking. Man is looking for an outlet. Running from society. Successfully?

B No one escapes from this POW camp.
S A member of society will always stay a member of society.
A The ocean wave can’t leave the ocean and the breeze can’t leave the wind.

Man can do more than beauty, doesn’t only want beauty, also wants other things. Escape from society, jump into the dirt, the social end. But society is very forgiving, one only has to find the way back. So, it can forgive. Fit in and we forgive. Amen.
S Fit in with your neighbour for example.

A Yes. Fit in with your neighbour. You like him. I like him, too.
M Fit in with your neighbour’s garden.
B Don’t you like his garden?
S Try

Robert Woelfl wrote this one act play as a commissioned work for the Wiener Burgtheater. There, the play was performed alongside three other one act plays as a homage to Werner Schwab on the 10th anniversary of his death.

The people in this play dream about beginning a new life and getting the chance to start over again. But as soon as they try turning their plans into reality, they fail. They fail because of their own despondency, their faithlessness, their procrastination, but also because important questions can’t be answered. And these questions are: is memory loss a curse or a blessing? Can you capitalise on memory loss? Is it impossible to change one’s life unless you’re basically forced to do so? And why is everyone suddenly interested in the inside of the other person instead of in the outside? (Robert Woelfl)

"Surviving-dying. Fighting-giving up. Saving-destroying. The ten characters in Austrian cult author Robert Woelfl’s play move between those extremes.
Opposing life ideas cause tensions, fuel conflicts, show their desire for outbreaks and destruction. Having arrived in its own focal point in the soul, the character’s desire for salvation is born, the desire for saving and being saved.
They play for moments of happiness and thus quickly lose what just seemed won. But until it’s decided who will survive, one sings contently and happily: “Me and you and you and me / No matter how they toss the dice, it has to be / The only one for me is you, and you for me / So happy together – We’re happy together.”" (Announcement inkunst München)

Helen and Phil are a couple who recently fulfilled their lifelong dream of buying a house. One night, as they are driving home from a party, they have an accident. Phil, who is at the wheel, hits a person with the car on the unlit country road. Instead of stopping to see if the person is injured and needs help, he and Helen flee the scene. The next morning, the doorbell rings. Outside stands Ina, who claims to have been hit by a car on the country road that night. Helen and Phil pretend not to know anything about it, but invite Ina into the house and offer her a cup of coffee. Ina then says goodbye, but soon returns and keeps coming back, each time under a different pretence. First, she demands money as compensation for the accident, then the entire house. She even claims that it was her parents' house and that she has a right to it. While Ina appears to be the victim at first, it later turns out that she may have staged everything in order to get the house. As the play progresses, Phil finds a large stone in front of the front door and carries it into the house. Each of them will take this stone at some point, lift it up and consider whether to drop it on the other. In the end, Ina will ring the doorbell again, enter the house and sit down on the sofa next to Phil and Helen. The guilt that Phil and Helen have brought upon themselves can no longer be erased.

Julia, Martin and Ricardo are young financial consultants in difficult times of economic crisis. Martin, for example, has a problem: he has convinced his parents – who are usually very risk-averse – to invest their money in “secure” stocks. And now the extremely unlikely has happened: the stock price has fallen, Martin’s parents have lost their pension, they don’t talk to their son anymore.
Julia has a customer, Niklas, whom she recently sold life insurance to and who now calls her several times a day, asking questions about her personal life. She doesn’t want to answer them, but Martin and Ricardo coax her – “tell him what he wants to know. Let him develop trust in you.” – for they know: “when you buy something, you develop feelings… he has developed feelings of affection for you.” But Julia replies: “As long as I earn that little, I don’t want any feelings of affection.”
Resignation or even hopelessness are not allowed. In the end, at least Martin has been able to convince his parents to buy stocks again.
JULIA You made your family a family again by behaving marketing-oriented.
RICARDO You reached a state of harmony by behaving marketing-oriented. That’s your job.

The three young advisors talk about emotions and relationships using the terms of the financial world, and talk about their work emotionally. The characters are touching in their stubborn enthusiasm for their jobs and their dogged insistence on a self-image which has lost most of its factual basis.

Marta and Albert lead a life they themselves designed on the drawing board. One day they shoot Erich, who had only come to fix their drains. An intolerable interference in their control mania, which is only the downside of incredible readiness to use violence because it’s the result of suffered violence.

The humiliations they inflict on Erich before they shoot him, they themselves suffer afterwards at the hands of Herr Richard, a law enforcement agent, whose exact function within the justice system remains unclear, but who, without intending to do so, restores Marta’s and Albert’s idea of deathly silence and unshakeable order by applying something to them that is familiar to them from their childhood.

“First, there was the silence. It jumps over from the stage to the auditorium. Spans the distance between five piano stools… arranged in a half-circle. And the people sitting down on them, wearing colourful clothes… don’t say anything, either. But then it starts: people are fighting and arguing for all they’re worth. Staccato insults and passionate stories are thrown back and forth. Everyone together, and still every man for himself.
Only the contract counts. Nick… has bought a treasure map for a lot of money, to go on an adventure. The others don’t support this. It seems too irrational. Rita… only thinks about getting money and risks her love. Lucy… wants to double her money in a risky way to further her career. Jonathan… is in love with his credit card and with his client consultant. Carlos… is under constant stress and drinks 20 special teas a day.
The premiere production of Robert Woelfl’s Wildnis und Casinos is a firework of tirades, which has been staged full of energy by Gernot Plass. The individual is the centre point: how does it deal with money, power and risk? Fast scenic bites are followed by sung intermezzi – as unpredictable as life. Risk is everything. Hugs, cheesy love songs or heartfelt guitar solos, on the other hand, mean security. Everyone is standing before the future on trembling, steadfast legs. What will they decide for? Risk?” (Wiener Zeitung)
Wildnis und Casinos was commissioned by the Theater an der Gumpendorfer Straße (TAG) in Vienna and was first performed there in April 2006.

An architect gets a contract to build a bank. But the condition for this is that the bank mustn’t look like a bank.
Tom has been waiting for a prestigious contract like this forever, hoping for his final breakthrough. But the search for the right architectural solution to the task plunges Tom into a crisis. He discards draft after draft.

At the same time, he is forced to realise that his marriage isn’t a marriage anymore, even though it still looks like one. Judith has been meeting up with Daniel, a successful (unlike Tom) and creative painter, for half a year.

Now, at the request of Judith, Daniel of all people is supposed to help Tom with an idea so he doesn’t lose the contract with the bank again. But Tom refuses to accept another’s idea and wants to save his marriage instead, seeing this as the much more important task.
Both men want to design a perfect building and at the same time win over Judith. Both men are also planning a house for her. Tom designs houses that challenge their inhabitants to think and to criticise society; Daniel designs houses that don’t challenge anyone to do anything and instead lure people in with pleasures.

In the end, the contractor will decide for or against Tom’s draft and Judith will decide, as well, but very differently from what Tom and Daniel expected.

Two tigers are held captive in the headquarters of Germany’s most important bank. For what reason? Nobody knows. Three people set out in the same night to enter the buildung and to search for these tigers. There is Mara, a militant animal protectionist who wants to free the two tigers. She wants to free all the animals of the world with a view of collapsing the financial system that way. Then there is John Tom James, a banker from New York, who is supposed to find out for his bank how money can be earned with tigers and whether his bank needs such tigers, too. And there is Paul, the young man who demonstrated against banks a year ago and who threw stones, but who would now love nothing more than to have a career in this bank.
Whether these tigers really exist and whether they are living animals at all or whether it is all merely a metaphor remains a secret for a long time.

A man stands on a pedestal in the middle of the pedestrian zone and tells his life story. He used to be a successful entrepreneur until one day he suddenly took his watch off his wrist and smashed it, drove his car into the wall in the garage, stopped picking up his phone, stopped entering his business and left his family. He used to be a successful entrepreneur who made doors and sold them all over the world, now he lives in a shelter by the canal, in a shack without a door.

At first it sounds like the man is asking us to follow the same path of renunciation that he walked. He sounds like a preacher looking for followers, like a seducer and leader of a cult, but soon it becomes clear that this man is talking about his own doubts all the time. Is it right to renounce everything and reject every form of possession? Is it right to give up everything and choose poverty? Is it the necessary turning back on a wrong path or merely another wrong path and another form of vanity? How can one escape one's own vanity at all?

Does society need such escapists? Merely as an exception to the rule? Or should society consist entirely of dropouts?

Do we need a front door made of gold or, on the contrary, should we close all doors behind us and never return to our old lives?