Thomas Hürlimann

When does bogus turn into fraud, falsehood into self-deception? Thomas Hürlimann invokes four stations, thresholds of history between 1889 and 1998, in the dense but weightless scenes of his new play. He doesn’t focus on the noise of historic mega events, but on the quiet, seemingly hidden history which changed the European individual, their face, their mind, their identity. Hürlimann’s scenes are set in Switzerland, but the masks of correctness and innocence, which take shape in a multitude of comical nuances in this play, have an international character.

“A whole century in one play? Thomas Hürlimann doesn’t convey a ‘whole’, but rather four (very significant) fragments. His fragments are constrictions, snaplike illuminations, which promote the truth by following falsehood up to the microcosm of language.” (Bruno Hitz)