Gerhard Roth

Sehnsucht
Stück in 13 Szenen
5 D, 7 H, 1 Dek
UA: 08.10.1977 · Theater Basel (Steirischer Herbst, Graz) · Directed by: Horst Zankl
When the play begins, it has already happened, so the play is about the description of ‘thinking again’, about remembering oneself in a crisis situation. In doing so, it is necessary for the individual characters to change, to become distorted. A reunion with your wife becomes threatening, a visit to your parents is a little comedy of ignorance. But within these characters, the possibility of difference remains open. The wife is probably not a threat, just depressed and rebellious – but she has a gun in her hand.
“Nothing, there is no difference” is the last sentence of the play, and leads us back to where we started. The desire for the death of the lost partner – spoken aloud and imagined – hasn’t changed anything either. And when remembrance is represented in the character of the teacher, his shadow self, Albert, tells him he must begin to view the loss of his partner as a memory. The teacher’s desire for his invisible love is shown to be satisfied, but that doesn’t seem to be true either, and Albert and the teacher have to come to terms with the separation. The transitory nature of the people remembering is contained in the individual scenes. They have been changed through their memory, they struggle to see themselves at all and to give themselves a role. Are they the same as they always saw themselves, or the opposite?” (Gerhard Roth)