Wolfgang Maria Bauer

Nanou
1 D, 2 H, 1 Dek
UA: 28.11.1998 · Staatstheater Stuttgart (Theater im Depot) · Directed by: Christoph Zapatka
Darkness and silence, the flipside of the theatre, prevail for a long time. Slowly, timidly, shadowy contours become apparent. Focusing and pausing seems impossible. The characters are careful to stay blurry. Names, places, stories can’t find a solid ground, and every attempt to capture them fails. And still, this is where new terrain originates: no man’s land, black grass. A cleared field. An old border strip? Maybe a minefield? Anyhow, the border has been removed.
Nanou, a young woman, is sitting there. She is bound. She is waiting, wearing all her clothes on top of one another. She wants to flee.
A stranger approaches, an oddly hunched figure: Färber. He describes the place from his memory, it’s the place of his own past. He lets himself get caught on purpose, he wants to perish like this. And for that he uses the third character of the play: Jeep. Färber lets himself die. Jeep helps him involuntarily, not knowing that the old man is his father.
Already, a red signal flare is illuminating the sky: Nanou is gone.
Translated into: French