Herbert Achternbusch

Tukulti
1 D, 9 H, St, 1 Dek
UA: 03.10.1998 · Das Schauspielhaus, Wien · Directed by: Hans Gratzer
1. The chair that isn’t a chair anymore
Tukulti: “Here I am. But, where are you?”
Tukulti, in a retrospective address to Ztsrupsi, the tongue-twister, the You, God, who acted as orientation and benchmark: “You’re gone, Ztsrupsi. I’m alone.”
2. The chair is a throne
Ztsrupsi from distant Ur sends his orders through envoys to Tukulti.
“Is Ztsrupsi still Ztsrupsi, if he talks through someone else?” Tukultis’ disappointment forms into doubts, evolving into a new, offensive insight: “We have been fooled. A God who leaves us, was never with us.” Tukulti anoints himself God “You say it. Where God once sat, I sit.”
3. Man is God (the empty throne)
Tukulti wages war.
The Pharaoh sends Tukulti his most beautiful daughter as appeasement. Tukulti declares his approval: “I am grateful and will take a new title: Highsoupapeidiot.” The wedding of Tukulti and Senfmut is celebrated.
4. God is nothing (four soldiers are carrying the stone throne, singing, before putting it down. With son Üsmi.)
“My father Tukulti, I suspect you know the enemy better than yourself. But you must know yourself better to see the enemy, do you recognise yourself in the enemy?”
Tukulti is attacked and mauled to death by a savage from the mountains.

Achternbusch succeeds in distilling a concentrate, an example case for the structures of power we designed and are surrounded by. While the characters move safely in their cages of reasoning, watching their behaviour creates the wish for a counter draft. In the changeable constellation of man and chair, the macrocosm of the history of mankind is mirrored as well as the microcosm of the history of a tribe, a single person.