Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän (Man in the Holocene)

Statement of the Jury

Herr Geiser is going under: in a rainy and overcast Tessin and in his own increasing forgetfulness, in a cut-off mountain village opposite sliding slopes. In this work based on Max Frisch’s novella, Alexander Giesche is less concerned with the story of losing track of the world and of one’s own self than with exploring it as a text that ponders on the relationship between mankind and nature, on acquiring knowledge as a way to reassure oneself of one’s existence. Tessin’s incessant rain pelts down on the curtain and the stage floor in all imaginable pitches and colourings. Knowledge material from a cement mixer to a holographic projector accumulates and sinks without a trace; children bridge an abyss in solidarity. Even a dinosaur, which Max Frisch was reminded of by a salamander in his living-room, makes an appearance. “Only mankind know disasters”, he writes, “provided they survive them. Nature does not know disasters.”