Der Tartuffe oder Kapital und Ideologie

In the 1980s, Orgon inherits a dilapidated house where he and his socialist flat share-friends live – and nobody pays rent. On the advice of his friend Tartuffe, Orgon starts to reorganise – and plunges deep into a neo-liberal catastrophe. Author Soeren Voima takes basic motifs from Molière’s 1664 classic and transfers them into an analysis of 40 years of economic and social history. With enthusiasm and Thomas Piketty, director Volker Lösch and his exuberant cast fling themselves into the gap between ownership and non-ownership and give the material a consummate shine.

Statement of the jury
Things have changed a great deal since the early 1980s, as evidenced by a flat share whose members have continued through their seedy, “who cares about cash”-beginnings to the orgies of speculation and the real estate boom of the present times. This extremely free adaptation only takes the most cursory of suggestions from Molière’s play; for the rest, Soeren Voima (alias Christian Tschirner) rhymes and writes a sharp-tongued trip across the economic, cultural and social transformation described by French economist Thomas Piketty in his analysis “Capital and Ideology”. The character of Tartuffe is an opportunity for the most shameless neoliberalism to shine and to always think and act a little quicker than all competitors. And what’s next? The end may be open, but it does not appear completely hopeless. How about a little more justice of distribution or economic morals – if such a thing even exists?

Tojuror Franz Willeʼs video statement in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library (in German)