Ewald Palmetshofer

Rosi and Hansi. Two women on a farm somewhere in the country. But what appears to be their life exists only in the absence of the only man in the house. His violence and unpredictability narrow the frame of their own existence to the utmost. But they are inventive, and they are each other’s everything: mother, daughter, girlfriend, mistress, rival, queen and princess. Two women in a quasi-polymorphic relationship constellation. A common plan emerges from deep within the abyss of their trauma, one which brings the relatively stable arrangement between the two of them out of line. If this man, son of the one and husband of the other, would only be cut open like a sow, everything would be well. Once spoken, this plan does not allow the two women to be content with their relationship anymore. Even the fragile piece of life they share is broken, and everything moves toward a catastrophe that was not foreseen in their plan.

The sexual trauma lies not so much within the act itself, but within the inability to verbalize its darkness and the absence of a stabilized gender relationship. Here, two women struggle to verbalize this trauma. However, any discourse available to them is doomed to fail...

And so the two women stand in the midst of the failure to articulate this trauma. There is only the way towards catastrophe, because no meta-language is available that could tame the unspeakable. Only the voice of a daughter remains, who says nothing and hopes for another language... (Ewald Palmetshofer)

In 2005, Ewald Palmetshofer was appointed a member of the board. sauschneidn. ein mütterspiel received the Retzhofer literature award for new drama.