Marlene Streeruwitz

What lies behind the backdrops of the stage? Who is hiding behind the great characters and heroes? One has to sharpen one’s glance for something else, for the remote people in the background, the ones who do the groundwork, who sacrifice themselves: mostly the women. Marlene Streeruwitz’ play is about the women in Lear’s family. Three daughters whose mother died early, whose father, the king, is ill-tempered and old, a drinking monster. Two of the daughters see their husbands as a millstone around their neck. Cordelia, the youngest, wants to do things differently, but it doesn’t work out that way. Even she has to yield to the men’s laws.
Abandoned by the young men who fell in love with her, but unfortunately wanted to be her first, the defenceless girl is preyed on by others. What one gets for himself through rape, her own father still has to desire. Drunk, ill and pimpled, he completely ruins his daughter’s manners through desiring her. Confused and destroyed Cordelia is left behind, her sisters’ advice in her head: “This is how it’s agreed upon. We have to do it wrong. Otherwise we won’t do it right.” Goneril and Regan have managed to hold on for longer. Good children play with their dolls, good mothers play with their children. And the talk of English housewives is about orange jam. But that their lovers don’t treat them right is too much – being a woman is hard. “Us women. We are already born into a grave.” Unsentimental and consistently tragic, Goneril wants to dig a grave for her children, her sister and herself. All that’s left behind is an old man, obsessed with power, called Lear, who is going to leave his story, and only his, to the theatre. (Theater Bielefeld)