Zum Sterben schön (To die for)
by Kerstin Spechtby Kerstin Specht
Content description
In this highly personal play, Munich author Kerstin Specht finds poetic and surreal images for the way in which life is interrupted by a cancer diagnosis. The central character Lisa Pisa finds herself rapidly overtaken not only by treatment plans and passers by, but also by her fellow patient, a certain Herr Jandl who would like to mean rather more to her.
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In her comprehensive oeuvre Kerstin Specht has moved between literary tradition and the Zeitgeist, her provincial upbringing in Upper Franconia and the city of Munich, where she has lived since the early 1980s. In both locations her texts are set »in a landscape on the margins of our society« and can be seen in the tradition of critical folk plays established by Ödön von Horváth and Marieluise Fleißer. With laconic humour she describes the pitfalls that lurk in everyday life and from the outset of her career she has placed female characters at the centre of world events.
In her commissioned play for the Residenztheater she again describes the life of a woman who refuses to be defeated by circumstances: Lisa Pisa runs the bridal outfitters »A Dream in White«, but the pandemic has not exactly helped her turnover. She herself is unmarried and recently broke up with the married man with whom she had shared a ten-year relationship. She could make a new start in every respect, only suddenly she collapses in the shop – and shortly afterwards finds herself in oncology and confronted with an entirely new perspective on the time she has to live.
FX Mayr, who has brought a light touch and keen sense of colour to staging texts such as »Und« by Nele Stuhler in the Marstall (2024), directs the world premiere of this commissioned play. He has also worked at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, Schauspielhaus Bochum and Schauspiel Stuttgart.
