Piece by piece

MASTERS OF DIALOGUE. Dealing with drama is what playwrights do for a living. Their métier is dialogue, the reply is their unit of measurement. Young authors’ plays have been in demand again at German theatres since the 1990s, when a call went up for contemporary pieces. Almost every theatre now has a Young Dramatists Festival or presents a corresponding award, a major one being the Mühlheim Drama Prize. The following successful dramatists have been recipients of honours of this kind:

Theresia Walser bears a famous name, that of her writer-father Martin Walser. Her grotesque dramas are known for their artificial alienation of everyday language. Pieces like “Die Kriegsberichterstatterin” function as alternatives to stage realism. Walser’s latest work “Ich bin wie ihr, ich liebe Äpfel” was premiered at the Nationaltheater in Mannheim.
 
Christoph Nussbaumeder, a dramatist from Lower Bavaria, dissects the everyday life of the petit-bourgeois. His dramas are dominated by individuals suffering from, or even being destroyed by, life’s conflicts. In 2005 his career got off to a lightning start with his debut play called “Mit dem Gur­kenflieger in die Südsee”. Today he is one of the frequently staged up-and-coming dramatists in Germany.

Nis-Momme Stockmann is a good example of the young dramatists being increasingly employed by German theatres. Between 2009 and 2011, Stockmann, a qualified cook, wrote plays like “Die Ängstlichen und die Brutalen” for the Schauspiel Frankfurt. The directness and emotional force of his plays have earned the 32 year-old the reputation of an angry young man.

Felicia Zeller’s trademark is colourful glasses. Stylistically, she is known for the incomplete sentences and jittery linguistic convulsions by means of which she takes banal everyday situations to hyperrealistic extremes — in “Kaspar Häuser Meer”, for example, which is one of the most successful new plays in Germany.