Stückemarkt V

In the streets an anarchist uprising is in full sway but the Neumann family are unimpressed and carry on their lives in pursuit of their own quite individual needs: every day the mother Iris eagerly looks forward to her favourite tv show “All That Glitters”. Daughter Marianne has fallen in love with a political refugee from Afghanistan, who wants her to return with him to his homeland. Son Robin is a passionate Star Wars fan who one day meets Luke Skywalker and plans to leave with him for America. Grandfather Erich shoots himself and father Walter’s response to his long-term unemployment is to decide to try his luck as a contestant on “All That Glitters”. When he loses, the family collapses. Father Walter fetches his mother from the care home and takes her with him to the work camp where an uncertain future awaits.

“All That Glitters” uses a grotesque family story to tell of a world which is falling apart. The Neumanns have a weirdly determined cheerfulness in trying to preserve the old habits and old times and lead an orderly family life, although the temptations of television are constantly drawing them into another reality and one disaster leads to the next. That the world outside has become threatening and uncertain is something they have internalized long ago and they bear this with a dry humour and relaxed manner: “There are so many flashpoints, soon we’ll have to call the fire brigade.”

Martin Heckmanns

Mario Salazar was born in Berlin in 1980, worked on a social project with looked-after children in Spain and France after graduating from high school and then completed his civil service in a psychiatric clinic in Berlin. This was followed by a Master’s degree in Political Sciences, Latin American and North American Studies at the Free University Berlin and the Universidad de Chile in Santiago. He has been studying at the German Creative Writing Program Leipzig since October 2009. He worked as an intern and assistant director at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin with Armin Petras and Milan Peschel and was invited to the Werkstatttagen 2010 at the Vienna Burgtheater. He is currently working on the plays ‘Life won’t make us fail’ and ‘Annalea’ as well as the epistolary novel ‘hans’. Mario Salazar lives in Berlin.

Cast

Scenic Arrangement Florian Fiedler
Dramaturgy Bert Zander
Stage and Costume Design Kathrin Frosch
Read by Margit Bendokat, Christian Grashof, Horst Kotterba, Ole Lagerpusch, Andreas Leupold, Anja Schneider and Aljoscha Stadelmann