Kaspar - Schedule, Program & Tickets

“The piece KASPAR [...] shows what IS POSSIBLE with someone. It shows how someone can be made to speak by speaking. The piece could also be called ‘Speech Torture.’” Says Peter Handke in the foreword to his piece KASPAR. This premiered in 1968 in times of political and social turmoil and risk. It was the era of radical contradiction against the realities of social and political reality when Handke radicalized the theater in his “speech plays” such as AUDIENCE INSULTATION. He breaks with the traditional rules of drama by no longer telling stories but instead turning language into action. Language acts and agitates through the “sayers” for and against and with Kaspar. Handke “doesn’t show how it REALLY IS or REALLY WAS with Kaspar Hauser”, but rather he presents “a model of people who cannot cope with themselves and the environment.” (Peter Handke) Language is the central medium in communication social values that appear in KASPAR in the different forms of education and discipline: as support, demands, excessive demands; as enticement, temptation, condemnation; as a reward, instruction, punishment etc.

Today you can also think of the piece KASPAR as a comedy that unfolds in a hellish and cheerful way between clowning and comics, between puppet theater and pop performance. The film is directed by American director Daniel Kramer, who directed Tony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA at the Academy Theater last season.

Subject to change.