Eliza Doolittle is at the bottom of the social hierarchy: without money or education, but with all the repartee of the rough street jargon, she fights her way through by selling flowers to passers-by. But then she meets the linguist Henry Higgins.
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Pygmalion
Eliza sees the professor as her chance for social advancement and asks for speaking lessons. After initial hesitation, Higgins agrees to it; he senses the possibility of a language and social experiment. He and his colleague Pickering make a bet: Higgins wants to use his expertise to introduce Eliza into upper-class English society within a few months.
George Bernard Shaw wrote his ironic-satirical work - based on the Ovid myth of the same name - as a supposed romance without a happy ending.
Shaw's play was adapted many years later as a love story under the title My Fair Lady, which became a global Broadway and cinema success.
Bastian Kraft places the language experiment at the center of his examination of the dazzling figure of Eliza Doolittle.
How are language, class and gender connected? What power and influence does speaking have on people and their perception in society? Can people play all sorts of social roles once they acquire language? And don't they ultimately bet with themselves every day as to whether others will buy their own role?
- Programme in German
Additional information
Participating artists
George Bernard Shaw (Autor/in)
Bastian Kraft
Julia Gräfner
Jens Koch
Daria von Loewenich
Mercy Dorcas Otieno
Caner Sunar
