Jan Peter Bremer

Der Fürst spricht
Stück in 2 Akten mit 1 Vor- und 1 Zwischenspiel
4 H, 1 Dek
UA: 19.03.2000 · Staatstheater Darmstadt · Directed by: Christoph Ernst
The sovereign is talking, and he has the last word!! He uses his power through talking, promising, discussing, grasping his world through and with language, entrapping his ‘subjects’ with trick questions and toppling them with invented lines of argument. Facts are not only changed, but fundamentally undermined and questioned through constant describing. The plot covers the timeframe between two funerals: in the beginning of the play, sovereign and steward are standing at the grave of the deceased administrator, in the end, the steward is about to be buried, whose job the new administrator is going to take over, primarily looking for a new steward in return.
Speaking isn’t used to communicate, but is an acoustic downbeat, the expression of a person trapped between delusion, dream, powerlessness and fantasy, memory and wishful thinking, without trying to spring from mundane reality. It’s a state of hovering in which the characters jump through hoops and perform acrobatic feats to fit into the image of the sovereign without giving up their own viewpoint.
Despite that, the sovereign is searching for the ‘truth’; he fastens onto and gets wedged – literally – into the steward and the administrator, penetrates them and asserts his regime of despotism.