Reigen. Variationen

24 hours in the Englischer Garten. Somewhere between Monopteros and the Haus der Kunst – in ten scenes and each time in pairs – DJ Ada, businessman Franzi, poet Graf, cleaner Maro and sex worker Eleonore meet. The multi-award-winning playwright Anja Hilling rethinks Arthur Schnitzler’s »Reigen« for the present. 

While Schnitzler’s world premiere in 1920 caused a scandal due to its explicit sexual content, Hilling uses the accidental meetings of a cross section of society as the occasion to question poetically and tenderly whether feeling and intimacy are possible. Schnitzler’s dialogues are set before and after the sexual act with an eloquent gap in between. In Anja Hilling’s play, only Graf is looking for an online date, which swiftly turns out to be a mistake and is not carried through. A techno party tempts people into the park – a moment of leisure in their hectic everyday or life without a home. Then a storm approaches that not only ravages the park but also uproots the characters. »Afterwards« in Hilling’s play means after the storm that rips what seemed like a guaranteed social order literally off its hinges. Because what is an ATM that has been torn out of the wall and stranded on the meadow, or a charging cable without a functioning socket?  Anja Hilling presents the upheaval of an extreme weather event not as a horror scenario but as a range of possibilities, as a liberation.

Since her debut in 2003 the author has unerringly captured the emotional economy of contemporary society in her plays in poetic words and sensual images. She has recently written commissioned works for Schauspiel Frankfurt, Theater Basel and »Teile (hartes Brot)« (2021) for the Residenztheater.

This commissioned work is directed by Ran Chai Bar-zvi, a director who was raised in Israel and now makes his debut at the Residenztheater with »Reigen. Variationen«. He has previously shown his atmospheric and approachable productions at theatres including the Münchner Volkstheater, the Thalia Theater in Hamburg and Schauspiel Frankfurt. He was the winner of the Kurt Hübner Directing Prize for emerging directors in 2024.