Hart auf Hart - Wollen Sie wippen?

Subtle satirical play at the table
by and with Elisabeth Hart & Rhaban Straumann

The German/Swiss duo Hart auf Hart from Leipzig presents an eloquent play with a lot of subtle humor. The Leipzig actress Elisabeth Hart and the Olten actor Rhaban Straumann came together artificially shortly before the pandemic, developed and wrote during the individual lock- downs an enjoyably satirical play for difficult and good times.
"Do you want to see-saw?" is a playground satire with no educational content or slogans. The play is about an actress and an actor reading a play they wrote themselves. In it, a woman and a man meet on a playground. First by chance, then again and again. She German. He Swiss. He takes pleasure in the suffering of the parents, she takes pleasure in the manipulation of the playground equipment. With due distance and without moral cudgels they approach big as well as relevant topics and do not shy away from delicate questions. Even superficial clichés are given depth in their conversation, while linguistic differences bring cultural differences to light.

She: "You say pi times thumb."
Him: "We say wrist times pi."
She: "Oh, how inaccurate."

As each day passes, the connection between the two people on the playground becomes more intense. He talks about his neighbor, the nice Nazi; she tells him she is writing a study about the big in the small. Together they observe small dictators in the sand and have the big ones of the world in front of their eyes. The boundaries between top view, insight and confidence obviously disappear, a challenging interplay between the observed and the observed develops.