Ein Wahnsinn was Menschen einander (UA)

Almost her entire life sits in front of her, carefully packed up in 31 boxed. Marion is moving. Her best friend Britta has brought her daughter Nana along to help. When they unpack together at the new and still empty flat, shared memories and unshared secrets emerge from the boxes.

It wasn’t easy for Marion to close the door of her old flat behind her. But every change, every act of giving away or throwing out, every transition and every separation, holds an opportunity – a chance to finally make a clean cut, even if you’ve only moved four streets away and you still shop at the same supermarket.

The three of them, Marion, Britta and Nana, have shared many years, stories, misfortunes and secrets with each other. The plan is to set up and arrange the furniture and eat cake. But the cake ends up in the freezer and the instructions to set up the new bed are nowhere to be found. Instead, along with old letters, post cards, a heart-shaped stone and a single knitted sock, the three women’s existential questions come to light: They involve memories, vital decisions, the longing for emotional security or the wish to form a unit beyond the classic family constellations. But there is more: the fears of being left alone in old age with a cup of tea and a comfy blanket, the faked and revealed self-images and life-long lies, the worries about the daughter, the unspoken injuries and rifts in their friendship, and even people who died long ago all make an appearance.
Did Marion really move because of a desire to change, to shed her skin from one day to another? How can you begin a new life, dare to make a new start, when you haven’t really finished with the old one? How much of the abyss is hidden behind the apparent banality of our relationships and conversations? What do we really decide in our lives and what simply happens?


Author Kristin Höller, born in 1996, grew up in Bonn and has been studying linguistics, literature and cultural sciences in Dresden since 2015. Her debut novel “Schöner als überall” was published by Suhrkamp in 2019. In her first theatre text, commissioned by Schauspiel Leipzig, she takes a perceptive and humorous look at a friendship between women and at three different stages of life. The world premiere production is Katrin Plötner’s third work at Diskothek after “DIE KUNST DER WUNDE” by Katja Brunner and Martina Clavadetscher’s “Frau Ada denkt Unerhörtes”.