Mein Name sei Gantenbein
Based on the novel by Max Frisch
Director: Oliver Reese
Berliner Ensemble
Imagine leaving everything behind and starting over: a different city, a different job, a different love affair. Imagine that it was up to you to shape your life. How would we live if we could act differently? Wouldn't we end up falling back into the same patterns, despite everything? Do we lack imagination, or courage, or conviction? Max Frisch's last great novel, "Mein Name sei Gantenbein" (1964), takes life's question of who we are and who we could be to the extreme. It gives voice to the doubtfulness of the modern human, as well as to the conflict between reality and possibility.
Director Oliver Reese and actor Matthias Brandt, returning to the theater stage for the first time in 20 years, explore Frisch's radically modern search for his own identity in the tension between ethical (What should I do?) and aesthetic (What do I want to do?) approaches to life: Couldn't everything be different? Couldn't I be a completely different person? Imagine that! Frisch’s moving novel, which explores the question of a person's identity and social roles, is re-imagined as a dramatic monologue that portrays life as a game of biographies and fictions.