Die Präsidentinnen

We find ourselves in a modest kitchen-dining room, the TV is on, and the Pope is giving a sermon. Erna, Grete and Mariedl, three ladies of contrasting ages and dispositions, are his most faithful adherents. But in fact, they are far more interested in talking about themselves. And they employ a linguistic relish in running down the outside world in general and the other two in particular. They invent fantasy worlds that revolve around themselves, where they are the stars. Erna and Grete are particularly self-congratulatory, their verbal pirouettes laced with half knowledge and double standards carrying them away for so long until the youngest, Mariedl, abruptly dashes their dreams and brings them back to earth with facts in a way that cannot end well.  

The Austrian playwright Werner Schwab – who died young in 1994, aged only thirty-five – is regarded as a radical reviver of the folk play and a linguistic virtuoso whose personal invention «Schwabisch» created an entirely new sound for the stage. At the very beginning of his career, in the comedy «Die Präsidentinnen», one of his so-called «faecal dramas», he created three incomparable female characters who try to defend their modest place in life with peasant cunning and a will to survive only to be tripped up by their own vainglorious delusions.   

Following her production of Samuel Beckett’s «Waiting for Godot» for an all-male cast, resident director Claudia Bauer stages Schwab’s modern classic for three female actors with great musicality.