Stefan Schütz

Hotel Abendland
Stück in 16 Szenen
5 D, 6 H, Verwandlungsdek
UA: 31.01.1999 · Landestheater, Linz · Directed by: Dagmar Schlingmann
Hotel Abendland is a venomous detective story about life and death, a battle between father and daughter, a battle of two “dead men on call.” Sex and crime in the ‘white-collar’ milieu of global economic order.
At death’s door, daughter Gala blackmails her cancer-ridden father, Hourany, who directs a gigantic pharmaceuticals empire. She wants to break his power and destroy his company. Hourany’s laboratories have spread sickness and deadly epidemics throughout the world in order to then deliver the right medicines and serums. Through these machinations, Hourany has not only won vast material profits, but also the reputation of benefactor and saviour of the people. Now, Gala has declared war on her father. The spoiled millionaire’s daughter turns out to be a Fury who wants to shake up the status quo. But Hourany doesn’t want to stand down.
Symbolically, this war takes place in the Hotel Abendland. Gala, who is staying in the hotel’s oriental room, sticks to old Canaanite deities (Anat, Baal, Mot); Hourany, in the Roman room, has dialogues with (the Christian) God. As Gala increasingly identifies with Anat, and Hourany thinks he is God, the war becomes a battle between two principles: adhering to the old, habitual structures or rebelling in the spirited dance of chaos. In this struggle for power, Stefan Schütz poses the old question of what determines the fate of the world. Or – what is the driving force of history?