Imagine leaving everything behind and starting over again: another city, another job, another love affair. Imagine that it was up to you to shape your life; you yourself would determine how your life would go... But wait: don't we? How would we live if we could only do otherwise? What would we do if we only wanted to be different?
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Mein Name sei Gantenbein
Mein Name sei Gantenbein
Mein Name sei Gantenbein
Mein Name sei Gantenbein
Mein Name sei Gantenbein
Mein Name sei Gantenbein
Mein Name sei Gantenbein
Mein Name sei Gantenbein takes Max Frisch's life question of who we are and who we could be to the extreme - and gives voice to the doubtfulness of modern man and the weighing of reality and possibility in equal measure.
Oliver Reese, who has already brought many monologues to the stage, directs his own adaptation of Frisch's last great novel with Matthias Brandt, who returns to the stage for it after a 20-year abstinence.
Additional information
ABOUT THE PLAY
MY NAME IS GANTENBEIN BY MAX FRISCH Adapted by Oliver Reese
YOU SHALL NOT MAKE ANY IMAGE OF YOURSELF
"A crisis is a productive state. You just have to take away the taste of catastrophe." Max Frisch
"Crisis" is derived from the ancient Greek word krísis, meaning "decision." A crisis is therefore a situation in which one has a choice. Those who have a choice are free, and it is their responsibility to decide: What next? What now? The state of constantly and repeatedly having to make decisions is an essential theme in Max Frisch's work. He circles around it in almost all his writings with his famous credo "Thou shalt not make thyself an image" – no image of the world (Homo Faber), no image of life (Stiller) and no image of thyself (Mein Name sei Gantenbein).For Frisch, to make an image of something means to reduce something to a concept, to be done with something – to move from a judgment of "it could be like this" to "it is like this." For Frisch, this is also the end of all love: in the claim to know the other, "in denying the claim of all living things to be incomprehensible." Frisch calls the crisis that supersedes any claim to reality "life" – whereas rigidity, certainty, immutability, repetition without hope or concern, is catastrophe. And so imagine: another life. Acting, not atoning; becoming, not being. •Johannes Nölting
WITH Matthias Brandt DIRECTOR Oliver Reese SET DESIGN Hansjörg Hartung COSTUME DESIGN Elina Schnizler COMPOSITION Jörg Gollasch LIGHTING Steffen Heinke DRAMATURGY Johannes Nölting
MY NAME IS GANTENBEIN BY MAX FRISCH Adapted by Oliver Reese
YOU SHALL NOT MAKE ANY IMAGE OF YOURSELF
"A crisis is a productive state. You just have to take away the taste of catastrophe." Max Frisch
"Crisis" is derived from the ancient Greek word krísis, meaning "decision." A crisis is therefore a situation in which one has a choice. Those who have a choice are free, and it is their responsibility to decide: What next? What now? The state of constantly and repeatedly having to make decisions is an essential theme in Max Frisch's work. He circles around it in almost all his writings with his famous credo "Thou shalt not make thyself an image" – no image of the world (Homo Faber), no image of life (Stiller) and no image of thyself (Mein Name sei Gantenbein).For Frisch, to make an image of something means to reduce something to a concept, to be done with something – to move from a judgment of "it could be like this" to "it is like this." For Frisch, this is also the end of all love: in the claim to know the other, "in denying the claim of all living things to be incomprehensible." Frisch calls the crisis that supersedes any claim to reality "life" – whereas rigidity, certainty, immutability, repetition without hope or concern, is catastrophe. And so imagine: another life. Acting, not atoning; becoming, not being. •Johannes Nölting
WITH Matthias Brandt DIRECTOR Oliver Reese SET DESIGN Hansjörg Hartung COSTUME DESIGN Elina Schnizler COMPOSITION Jörg Gollasch LIGHTING Steffen Heinke DRAMATURGY Johannes Nölting
Participating artists
von Max Frisch (Autor/in)
Matthias Brandt
Hansjörg Hartung
Elina Schnizler
Jörg Gollasch
Steffen Heinke
Johannes Nölting
Oliver Reese
Dates
April 2026
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