Prosperos island
Prosperos Insel is a play by Tankred Dorst , the text of which was published by Suhrkamp in Frankfurt am Main in 2008.
Title, time and place
Sombarth meets an American woman who wants to buy the place of the action - the small island - from him because she was supposedly born on the island. He heard, the old man chats, that the island appeared in a Shakespeare play . Not without alluding to his own sensitivities, that of the elderly playwright, Tankred Dorst means the storm , which is considered the last play by the great Englishman. In it, the magician Prospero is stranded on an island. In the Sombarth case it was a little different. As a young lad, Sombarth had to fly missions in the war and, staring out of the plane, had that island in mind. After the war he wanted to make it a paradise.
Tankred Dorst names the Guardia Civil and the coastal town of Santa Pola . So the viewer is dealing with a Spanish Mediterranean island near the mainland.
action
A magician was mentioned above. So it is not surprising when the protagonist Sombarth - a man from the second half of the 20th century - runs after old Teresa of Ávila into the thistles and implores the Holy Help in his misery. Because the son died at a young age. Teresa accepts the fact unmoved. The viewer already knows that Sombarth is avoiding the truth: he lied to an old English sailor and an old islander that the boy was the victim of a traffic accident on the street. Sombarth's son Felix was scolded a terrorist by old women on the island. During his lifetime Felix turned down his father's inheritance - several shoe factories - and referred to his destiny: “My death will be the greatest moment in my life!” Old Sombarth blames Klaus, a former friend of his boy, for Felixen's death. At the time, Klaus put these extreme ideas into the boy's head. Klaus, now grown up and extremely wealthy (Klaus landed on the island with his own ship), doesn't want to hear about the youthful folly.
In any case, Teresa of Ávila does not help old Sombarth in his need. In addition, he has to deal with the death of his beloved wife Gertrud all by himself. Neither the cancer-stricken brother Simon nor the tongue-tied sister Roelle are of no help to the widower in coping with the grief. Sombarth is complicit in the death of his wife. He had carelessly lifted the handicapped woman from her hospital chair on the mainland and carried her through the shallows to the island. In this thoughtless act, the woman died on the way, also because of the carelessness of the "porter".
It is very likely that Tankred Dorst meant the latter scene - it is called See my island - symbolically. Because some things are absurd : The aviator Hella, for example, a young colleague of the aviator Sombarth, is ultimately lying in individual parts - a conglomerate of legs, arms, face and upper body - on a chair. The end of the piece is not out of the ordinary in this respect. The factory owner Sombarth has invited guests from all over the world to a fish dinner and wine drink on his island. The Emperor of Austria , the Bishop of Toledo , Fischer-Dieskau , Dali , Otto von Habsburg , Nurejew , Franz Beckenbauer , the German Chancellor , Claudia Schiffer , Depardieu , a Franco Colonel without legs, Boris Becker , Marius Müller-Westernhagen , Margaret Thatcher , the Queen , Nike Wagner and Mr. Peymann are stuck on the mainland because of a storm. Meanwhile, the poor islanders are attacking fish and wine. When the waves have calmed down and the guests can cross over, they only find bones and empty wine bottles.
literature
Text output
- Prosperos island. Scenes, images and dialogues to tell a story. Pp. 289–341 in Tankred Dorst. Prospero's island and other pieces. Collaboration with Ursula Ehler . Work edition 8 (content: Othoon . Purcell's dream of King Arthur . The desert . I'm only here temporarily . Artist . Prospero's island. To practice earthly things (Frankfurt poetics lectures)). Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008 (1st edition), ISBN 978-3-518-42039-3 , 416 pages (used edition).