Oliver Czeslik

Like a nightmare, the story masks reality, and fiction and reality densify into a weave in which the characters become disastrously entangled. The play is a child’s dream, a violent dream, but a dream of love at the same time.
Three young people, Eduard, Marianne and Abraham, live in an old dorm and try to make it their home. Eduard, the youngest, wakes up from a nightmare. It’s his birthday, it’s Christmas. And while Marianne decorates the Christmas tree, a mask-like figure with iron in its neck appears: the general.
The layers of time shift, the past superimposes the present with war and death. At night, Eduard and his friend Abraham roam the streets, go on a cruel people hunt, a hunt for children. The “child lover” kills children to eat their meat. Marianne, who is pregnant by Eduard, has the baby killed. The aborter opens a black curtain and shows her the grinning skulls of the dead children, which have been impaled on bloody sticks. A drama, a spectacle, an eerie puppet play.
“The game is over”, the characters are dead, but they rise again and keep playing: the game of death, of war, of battle and of love. At the end, Marianne and Eduard are back in the dorm as if they had only dreamt the cruel slaughter. Abraham enters and opens the scene: “Let’s talk about love.”