Fräulein Else

Else is spending the summer at a swanky health resort when she receives an urgent letter: her father is deeply in debt, and she needs to approach the significantly older art dealer Dorsday for money to save the family’s reputation. However, Dorsday makes one condition: he will only give Else the required sum if she exposes herself to him naked for a quarter of an hour. In her works Leonie Böhm always searches for new readings of canonical texts: encounters in the here and now are a fundamental principle of her theatre praxis. In her gripping version of Arthur Schnitzler’s famous novella Fräulein Else from 1924 she and Julia Riedler turn Else’s interior monologue inside out and invite the audience to consider a dilemma stigmatised by shame live, to help negotiate it and to feel some responsibility for the outcome. Displaying wit, spontaneity, verbal artistry and multiple levels, Riedler performs a dazzling solo that exposes hypocrisy and declares war on patriarchal power structures.  

Jury Statement

“Almost every line of Leonie Böhm and Julia Riedler’s Schnitzler adaptation is from 1924. However, the text lands firmly in the present thanks to the exceptional performance of Julia Riedler as Else. She turns the stream of consciousness of an eighteen-year-old who is blackmailed into undressing in front of a family friend to raise money to cover her father’s debts into a lively dialogue with the audience. In doing so, Riedler gives those watching a clear share of responsibility, making them accomplices in Else’s inescapable situation. With an incredibly quick wit and a twinkling nonchalance she holds the auditorium in the palm of her hand – and takes pleasure in winding her audience around her little finger. Her Else is wide awake, fearless and unpredictable. As a result, this evening based on Schnitzler’s construct progressively dreams of a utopia for our time, where the abuse of power is still omnipresent. A radically contemporary solo and an exercise in empathy at the same time.”
– Vincent Koch for the Theatertreffen-jury

Tothe video statement (in German)