Die Verlorenen

A place on the edge to somewhere. Erika sometimes goes to the old school director to look after him. His son lives in the city, he can not take care of his father. That's what Erika does. On the weekend she works temporarily in a bar. She pays her own way, barely. When the son comes to check on things, in the country which is slowly dying, it becomes clear that the three of them were very close, many years ago. The old man, however, has settled in with his desire for death, the young man is settled in his city. Only Erika is still looking for a warmth that makes herself melt, that makes her be able to speak, to tell stories. Because the animals do not speak. (Ewald Palmetshofer)

tier. man wird doch bitte unterschicht emerged as part of the drama scholarship of the culture circle of the German Economy in 2009 in cooperation with the Staatsschauspiel Dresden.

"Palmetshofer has captured a village horror show in a highly musical language: a richly varied, iambic sounding and singing; A sound image that you have to recite aloud to hear its insidious backdrop. "(Theaterheute)

"This is a wicked, sharp piece of language- and society criticism, one which does not act as if it is a piece language- and society criticism on the stage." (Frankfurter Rundschau)

"Ewald Palmetshofer's text is also a wonderful text for reading; with it the young author once again proves his enormous linguistic power and his multi-layered, dissecting, and provocative thinking." (Nachtkritik)

The day the president gives his speech, hearts are only a spark or two away from bursting into flames. He does not know this, however. And who would have thought that anyone would take this president seriously—apart from his four consultants, who are hard at work putting words into his mouth. Faster than you think, one heart rises and a second falls to the ground. Because this president obviously speaks directly out of people’s heart. herzwurst. immer alles eine tochter is a nightmarish reflex to the ruling and opinion-forming truth-discourses, recently also from the right wing, that takes place under the name of democracy. Because having an opinion is completely safe, and is sufficient for the maintenance of regular operations. This is the eighth commandment of the Decalogue.

Falstaff is the uncrowned king of the pubs. His tongue is a sword, his beer belly a tank. Not good company for the country's young elite - especially for the heir to the throne, the son of King Henry IV. With the eloquent, sharp-tongued, drunken, sluggish lazybones and braggart Falstaff, Shakespeare has created a character who unites everything that contradicts the prevailing order, the cold calculation and warmongering exploitation of bodies. The meat mountain is disturbing! And so it seems only logical that even Shakespeare himself announces the contrary Falstaff, popular with the audience, at the end of "King Henry IV" in a promotionally effective way for his follow-up play "King Henry V", but wipes him away in the sequel as a mere footnote to the story. The dirty man has no mission in the realm of success.
In his new play, the multi-award-winning playwright Ewald Palmetshofer brings together characters and motifs from Shakespeare's historical dramas about the usurper King Henry IV, his son, the later King Henry V, and the anti-hero Falstaff, and tells of love, humiliation and betrayal - the rise of one and the fall of the other - in a highly musical language score. (Residenztheater Munich)

"Falstaff is excess. He is the overflowing too-much-of-everything, surplus that does not yield a profit. As long as it's fun, you can afford such a Falstaff. The gentlemen like to lower themselves to him. What a laugh we had. But - please understand - after your own ascent, this heavyweight has become an unacceptable ballast. Has anyone spoken of equality? A misunderstanding. Sorry, dear!" (Ewald Palmetshofer)

Dani and Mani, brother and sister, come home for their grandma’s birthday. By chance at a friend’s funeral, they bump into their old friends, Bine and Oli, who are now married. Oli used to be interested in Dani, way back when they were all friends. Relationships among family and friends shift, morph and are never what they seem – it is inevitable that something is going to happen.
In this play, Ewald Palmetshofer weaves language and rhythm into something comic and threatening that ultimately leaves just one question open: To resign or to act?

A meeting of three people. Once they shared many things. They shared their adolescence. And, with a bit of effort, they shared certain ideological ideas. Now they meet again, a few years later. The loss of this former intimacy looms large over their meeting. There is little left to be said to each other, but their heads are buzzing. In the course of one night, they articulate their own standpoints and perspectives. They take stock. They relive old intimacies. They let their bodies collide and their brains rant. And the next morning they climb a mountain. And there is something to celebrate, because someone is getting married.

Do you just exist, or are you actually living? This question is a question about your entire way of being. If you are actually living in a completely post-ideological time, your way of living still seems to indicate whether you are successful or not - both professionally and privately, financially and emotionally. (Ewald Palmetshofer)

wohnen. unter glas examines the lifes of people in their midthirties in a humorously painful way. Palmetshofer examines their search for meaning through a consequent usage of language. The words burst in like the future, and the words fail, just like the future will. The words of his protagonists flow and interrupt each other continually, a verbal representation of the impermanence of all negotiated circumstances and the fragility of time. wohnen. unter glas was created in 2006 for the workshop days at the Burgtheater in Vienna.

If the past century was defined by a race towards totality, we are still racing, a-politically and privately, from one product to the next, until only one thing remains to be consumed: our fellow human beings. Man is not a wolf to other men; he is a product, a total commodity to others. One must be able to take him in, this fellow man, before he is spoiled by the others, one should be able to eat him before he becomes rotten and begins to stink. We are hungry enough. (Ewald Palmetshofer)

"Ewald Palmetshofer is a completely individual artist of language, one who shakes not only the sky and the earth, but also logos and logistics, in order to deal with the everyday. Of course, he also concerns himself with life and death." (Christine Dössel, on the conclusion of the jury in awarding the dramatist prize of the cultural circle of the German economy 2008)

In a time long ago: the Britons and the Saxons are arming themselves for the final battle. Soon the men of young King Arthur and the warriors of the Saxon king Oswald will face each other in combat to decide who rules the island. Rumours circulate among Arthur’s men about the Saxons’ strange rituals, a dark cult of worship to their Nordic god, about spirits and a cunning magician. If the great magician Merlin was not one of Arthur’s close confidants, the Britons’ situation would appear hopeless. When Arthur’s lover, the blind Emmeline, is kidnapped by the Saxon king, a chase begins through enchanted forests and moors populated by airborne and earth-dwelling spirits, nymphs and fauns. Lost in a shadowy world between dream and reality, Arthur not only has to win back Emmeline, he must also keep alive the hope that peace is possible on the island. Because neither the Britons nor the Saxons can predict whether weapons, magic, trickery or reason will have the final say. And what will be left once the final spell has been spoken, the last sword broken and the final song has died away?

Purcell and Dryden’s semi-opera, which received its world premiere in London in 1691, combines acting, singing, music and dance in a single artistic experience embracing all the performing arts. The semi-opera genre is a delicate hybrid form, a play with music in which – unlike classical opera – the plot is carried forward by actor in speaking roles. Purcell placed a glorious baroque sound world alongside Dryden’s play that was freely based on an early version of the Arthurian legend. Apart from the best known aria from King Arthur, the Cold Song, Purcell’s rich musical cosmos is ripe for discovery as an integrated part of a fairy-tale narrative about the desire for a world that is at peace.

Business is going well in the Hoffmann house. The son and heir is about to be born. Helene is coming back to help her sister. And in the parental home, she meets Loth and with him, love. The future seems bright. But unfortunately, the foundations of humanity rotted long ago. And man is most himself when disaster approaches. Ewald Palmetshofer’s re-writing of Gerhart Hauptmann’s “social drama”, translated for the present day, is vivid and clear. In his version, the women bloom into life. Tried by sorrow but defiant, they look towards the future. And while at the beginning hope still stirs, and it seems that Palmetshofer’s version could perhaps turn out well, it is soon revealed that even in the here and now, humankind cannot escape darkness. It seems as though the night has swallowed up the day. No sunrise. Never again. A moving and sad piece of theatre.

A young woman is very upset in April 1945. A military patrol is called. 70 years later. The young woman is now an old woman. Her daughter finds her on the floor in the kitchen. She has fallen. She is very upset. An ambulance is called. And the doctors and nurses are meeting in the hospital, and 70 years ago there was a military court martial and a year later a people's court. And a young woman is taken away. "Not unattractive", write the newspapers, "but unrepentant". And while the daughter brings flowers to her father's grave, the young granddaughter collects the men like butterflies or stamps, the public prosecutor collects statement after statement, the people gather to sit in judgement, apples are picked from the ground in the field and the judge reads out his verdict. And a daughter mourns her father and a strange father mourns his son. Between past and present, between prison and court, kitchen, bed and hospital, Palmetshofer's generational drama uses highly artificial and rhythmic language to examine the lives of three women. It is a polymorphous remembrance, a trial, a judgement, and tells of the hopeless entanglement of three generations in a web of guilt and love.

David and Judith are superheroes. Ever since their childhood. Spiderman and Catwoman. An old game that still needs to be kept up, one which is filled with a political overflow which is ideologically empty, based only on itself. They are deeply engaged in their game, and placing firebombs in local department stores. They fight against their parents and against their own generation of beautiful and successful people. Paul and Judith try to be a couple. Their parents try to relax. They all make some attempts at going to therapy. Some of them even try life coaching. But everybody is a perpetrator here. And no one has a real political foundation. Only the bombs speak a clear language.

After the proclaimed death of the ideological concept, political desire is empty and impossible. The sibling couple David and Judith operate along this impossibility. Constantly threatened by the danger of perishing, imploding - in an environment, a foam cell which assimilates every desire – there remains only the desire to turn into a bomb, the desire of total annihilation. But it will not be something political that initiates this transformation, this transubstantiation, but pure, apolitical, bourgeois love. Of course. As a young adult, you are enlightened enough to know that the struggle against your own parents and their political failure is no longer a good thing. The other battle is different, quite different—the battle against one's own generation. (Ewald Palmetshofer)

In January 2007, Ewald Palmetshofer was invited to New York for the "hotINK International Play Reading Festival" (presented by Tisch School of the Arts at NYU) with the English translation of heroes (English superheroes by Neil Fleming). The scenic reading was arranged by Dieter Boyer.