Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve is a play by the Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann .
The drama thriller premiered on February 2, 2017 in the Vienna Theater in der Josefstadt under the direction of Herbert Föttinger . Maria Köstlinger as philosophy professor Judith and Bernhard Schir as investigator and interrogation specialist Thomas played the main roles .
The English-language premiere took place on October 19 at the Theater Royal in Bath ; the first performance in Germany on January 26, 2018 at the Residenztheater in Munich .
The piece takes place late on Christmas Eve in real time. It is a two person piece .
action
The philosophy professor Judith is arrested on Christmas Eve on the way to her parents. As a philosopher, she thought about violence as a possibility of protest. She is accused of planning a terrorist attack at midnight with her ex-husband . Her husband was arrested earlier and is being interrogated at the same time. The police officer and interrogation specialist Thomas has exactly 90 minutes to find out whether she really wants to carry out a terrorist attack at midnight in order to prevent it. He knows almost everything about her, her work and her failed marriage and also that she met her ex-husband for several hours the day before. He plays out his supposed omniscience in the age of smartphones and laptops and, in the course of the interrogation, puts more and more brutal pressure on them as the time decreases and does not shy away from physical violence. Judith initially reacts with astonishment at his knowledge and replies, among other things. a. with the theses of the French psychiatrist , politician and writer Frantz Fanon on the rights of the oppressed and tries again to irritate her counterpart with specific questions and thus to bring them off the hook. A kind of letter of confession is found on her laptop, which she declares as a study project for her students. The conclusion is open, the viewer does not experience the resolution.
background
According to his own account, Kehlmann was originally inspired by the American western High Noon by director Fred Zinnemann from 1952. While he was working on the play, he was also influenced by the revelations of Edward Snowden and the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris .
reception
Christoph Leibold says in the BR that Daniel Kehlmann is dealing with "a great dilemma of our day in his new drama". The strength of the piece is "that the author does not take sides, but equips the potential terrorist with the same argumentative power as her counterpart". The dpa judges that the play "could be a race against the clock, but over long stretches it seems more like a less dramatic, albeit entertaining, argument". Heinz Sichrovsky says in the Kronen Zeitung that the piece is a bit overambitious, but has a strong implementation and is "cleverly exaggerated into Kafkaesque".
Trivia
The production of the theater in der Josefstadt was recorded by ORF and published in the Edition Josefstadt at Hoanzl 2018. The filming of the play began in 2019 under the title " The interrogation in the night ". Daniel Kehlmann wrote the script for the television adaptation of his play.
Publications
- Four pieces: Spirits in Princeton / The Mentor / Christmas Eve / The Journey of the Lost, Rowohlt, 2019, ISBN 978-3498034757
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Holy Evening landgraf.de
- ↑ a b Race between system and system criticism Deutschlandfunkkultur.de
- ↑ a b c Kehlmann's other "Christmas Eve" Focus.de
- ↑ Daniel Kehlmann's new play Heilig Abend br.de
- ↑ Kafka in real time krone.at
- ↑ Matti Geschonneck directs the ZDF thriller "The interrogation in the night" Zdf.de
- ↑ New ZDF thriller with Charly Hübner: "The interrogation in the night" goldenekamera.de