Otto Schenk, Eberhard Streul

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Theatre Museum.
My name is Sedlacek… I am the director of the Theatre Museum… I used to perform here.
Not everything.
I would have liked to perform some of it…
Then the theatre was closed.
That was ten years ago.”

A tour through a closed theatre is the setting for this new piece by Eberhard Streul and Otto Schenk, the follow-up to their extremely successful Sternstunde des Josef Bieder. The tour gives the former actor Sedlacek the opportunity to declaim Goethe and Schiller, demonstrate the stage machinery, glitches and all, and to voice his reflections about the art of theatre and the cultural policy of our time. The volunteer Dr Regula Nachtigall is always at his side. She valiantly battles with the machinery even when a stage weight falls on her foot, and the same passion for theatre burns in her as it does in the old mime.
SEDLACEK They killed it, my theatre. Killed it, Nachtigall.
NACHTIGALL No… Don’t think that.
One day the theatre will open again…
They can’t kill our desire to act.
It burns too strongly in us.
It will keep breaking through.