“The politicians the politicians the politicians / the politicians – / the politicians the politicians the politicians / the politicians the politicians – / The politicians are walking down the snow-covered slopes / I can see them from a distance / What are they up to?”
This is the beginning of the theatre poem by Wolfram Lotz. In poetical verbal imagery and musical cascades of words, Lotz – winner of awards including the German Dramatists’ Prize – describes the expectations connected with the term “politicians”. Whatever politicians can and must do, should and shouldn’t do, what they are and aren’t allowed to do and what they are absolutely not allowed to do is drilled deeper and deeper through our hearing and into our brain, continuing all the way into the personal sphere. With no pause for breath, Lotz looks at what is our responsibility and what is that of those in power, only to blur the lines between them in the next line with vim and vigour. It’s an icy-cold downpour of boundless language driven by fire, urgency, grief and a gleefully skipping wit. Lotz sets his thoughts and speech and laughter against prejudice, calling upon us to stop blaming others and delegating responsibility and to start taking action instead. This text is a call for help that comes from the deepest, loneliest quarantine, only briefly interrupted when a cat comes to visit.
Marie Bues has been a freelance director since 2008 and artistic director of Stuttgart’s Theater Rampe since 2013. In 2019/20, she directed Thomas Köck’s Antigone. Ein Requiem for Ballhof Eins and this season, she will stage this apocalyptic game of language, poetry and puns.