Mareike Beykirch

Disappearing, fading away, vanishing and escaping – Aristophanes’s comedies deal with everything in the world that is ephemeral: life, happiness, property, knowledge and trust. They tell us about the complicated business of being human, about the problem of the just distribution of wealth, about greed, twisted rhetoric, and the eternal incompatibility between theory and practice.

In his plays, the Chilean director and playwright Guillermo Calderón achieves an entirely original combination of humour and political power. Many of his texts are highly comic tales of the prejudice, ignorance and egotism that come to light through intercultural exchange. His latest play for the Residenztheater tells of the efforts of a religious sect in Munich to advertise for a newly founded settlement in Chile.

«Once the social order has been consolidated, anyone who is not alarmed by reality is as free as they wish,» Jean Jourdheuil wrote about Labiche’s work. But in this play, that alarm is felt: Lenglumé begins to realise what he might be capable of and as a result – at least for a day – his self-assurance and satisfaction crumble.

On the basis of interviews that the journalist and writer Jürgen Berger conducted with trans* people in Thailand and Germany between 2017 and 2022, the production explores the gap in society which these people inhabit in both countries.