Katja Brunner

Katja Brunner's new text is set in the homes of the elderly, the sick and the untouched who have been robbed of their homes. According to the author in the foreword, it is a SPEAKING WITHOUT A FUTURE and therefore "freer than many other forms of speaking". This speech does not take up space in front of the edge of the bed, but burrows into the bed places decorated with excrement and scabs, tubes and catheters of those condemned to lie down. Shielded from a world to which they had actively devoted themselves, they look in amazement at the shards of their middle-class lives: things they have experienced stand next to things they have irretrievably missed, dreams mutate into nightmares. The body damaged by a stroke is perceived by its resident as a forgotten glove, another is threatened with expulsion for sexually assaulting female nursing staff. Haematomas inflicted by touches from carers' hands are regarded by common consent as a "sign of affection". The old people no longer mince their words in front of their parched mouths. Gush after gush bursts out of them unheard. In the end, the cancer gains the upper hand. Spellbound, they listen to the inner growth of the tumour until their jaws drop.

geister sind auch nur menschen is a text for and by the terminally ill, who are not supposed to hinder their offspring trimmed for capitalist activity, in the care of a nursing home; it is a full-blooded drama that brings the dying back into the centre of a society that professionally excludes them.