Eingeschlossene Gesellschaft

They don’t have much in common. Until an angry father turns up and demands that they discuss his son’s endangered eligibility for the A-levels.

When the teachers refuse to discuss the matter, the father resorts to drastic measures: he locks the group in the staff room and forces them to hold a highly unusual marks conference. What begins as a clear-cut confrontation between a desperate father and a seemingly conscientious teaching staff quickly escalates into a ruthless reckoning.

Locked away in the room, certainties begin to waver. Old conflicts resurface, personal vanities are laid bare, and the teaching staff’s respectable facades start to crumble. The longer the involuntary meeting drags on, the more pressing the question becomes: are these people really entitled to decide the future of a young person?

But the father, too, must answer for his actions. How far is he allowed to go to help his son? And does his cause really justify the means he resorts to?

In his biting comedy *Eingeschlossene Gesellschaft*, Jan Weiler brings together six very different teachers and a determined father in a confined space. With pointed dialogue, a sharp eye and plenty of black humour, the play explores power, responsibility, prejudice and an education system in which it is by no means only the pupils who are being tested.

• Directed by: Wolfgang Rumpf
• Set design: Erwin Bode