Angabe der Person

Specification of the person. That sounds like the finest officialese. And indeed: the German tax authorities haunt Elfriede Jelinek's new play. The tax investigation goes around, private premises are searched, papers are confiscated. On these papers: everything that accumulates in a long life. Stories of the living, stories of the dead, more of the dead by now. For a voice speaks from the text that feels like the last: "After me, it's irrevocably over with the Jelineks! All gone, all gone, except me." Thus the author takes "the last meters" as an opportunity to look at her own "life course," at the "misdeeds" of her own past, at the "undead" of her biography. She tells of her parents and grandparents, of the Jewish part of her family, of relatives who were expelled and murdered, of flight and persecution, of the compensation of the perpetrators, of old and new Nazis, past and present. She writes as an accused plaintiff, as a victim, and as a lawyer. About herself. About Germany. Sometimes in overflowing cascades of rage and words. Sometimes as a reminder of the forgotten and as a funeral dirge of rare clarity. Jossi Wieler, who has worked closely with Elfriede Jelinek for thirty years, premieres one of her most personal theater texts to date. Invited to the 48th Mülheim Theater Festival Invited to the Hamburg Theater Festival Neudeutschland Follow-up discussion with Jossi Wieler and others: May 1, 10 p.m., Saal To the digital bonus material.