Roland Schimmelpfennig

Fisch um Fisch
1 D, 3 H
UA: 08.05.1999 · Staatstheater Mainz (TIC) · Directed by: Roland Schimmelpfennig
Roland Schimmelpfennig’s first script fights hard for mysterious objects, for fish and for life. The story begins directly: “Give me the shoes,” the young man demands of the old and all of a sudden breaks into his hut. He wants to catch fish, in the middle of winter, the blue herrings under the ice. For this he needs things that the young girl finds on her invisible path. They are tangible, visible, useful and concrete. And yet they transform before your very eyes like in a fairy tale. A spoon turns into an oar and then a key made from gold and silver. The young girl climbs out of the kitchen window, jumping over big rocks on steep paths. The young man comes and vanishes through walls or invisible doors. The old man sits in the hut and sees nothing. A stranger appears in the wasteland and encounters the young girl. She wants to dance with him, but he leaves. “People can’t just vanish.” The stranger is the “man outside”. He comes and he goes. “The man outside” stays outside. “There is no one outside,” says the old man and divides the miraculously speaking fish up between the three of them.
Roland Schimmelpfennig tells an enigmatic story, laying tracks that lead to no goal, but which we nevertheless follow with anticipation, and inventing characters that seem real but which mysteriously elude your grasp. A language without embellishment, clear and meaningful, and yet hermetically closed to any obvious meaning.
Fisch um Fisch (awarded the 1997 Else-Lasker-Schüler-Förder prize) is as thrilling as a whodunit, as distant as a myth, as cryptic as an incantation and as innocent as a children’s story.
Translated into: Catalan, Spanish