Der Einzige und sein Eigentum

A white ramp spirals upwards, dominating the stage. Six actors enter to minimalist sounds. Like vocal acrobats, they sing and perform philosophical texts by Max Stirner, placing them firmly into the space. The texts describe a radical selfishness and the self’s refusal to be taken into service by any superordinate authority. On the one hand, thus, a liberation from something – on the other, a fundamentally antisocial existence within this new freedom. A combination of lightness and severity unfolds, of roughly sketched scenes and musical flights of fancy, of revue and painting – a space for thought of great openness and associative force.
In his multi-disciplinary work, Sebastian Hartmann cares little for classical elements of theatrical narrative like characters or conflicts. His objective is to use devices of visual art, music, video and performance to create a space for thought that will activate the viewer’s autonomy. And so Max Stirner’s propositions from the year 1844 are accompaniment rather than the subject of this enchantingly atmospheric show featuring powerful images, forceful electro-pop sound planes by PC Nackt and actors who commit completely to the evening’s form and narrative style.

Statement of the Jury
Before its publication in 1844, Max Stirner’s book “Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Ego and Its Own)” was banned because the author, whose work was to influence Nietzsche and Marx, made an outrageous claim: Everybody is only their own and no authority, no entity is above them. What was once social dynamite has today become mundane and is at times even practised to extremes. Director and set designer Sebastian Hartmann and composer PC Nackt have distilled their very own form of musical theatre from this unwieldy material – a review packed with strange, beautiful and dark twists along a permanently revolving spiral tower. Backed by heavy sound fields, spiky tones and danceable songs, Hartmann and the company of six performers associate a wide variety of interpretations and emotions of the Ego, lay a robot to its final rest, get lost in a 3D animated bee hive. How much Ego do we need and how unique is it? With an overwhelming lure, the Gesamtkunstwerk of “Der Einzige und sein Eigentum” meditates on these questions, while unceasingly advocating for cooperation between many Egos.

Tojuror Eva Behrendt’s video statement in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library (in German)

Programmebooklet (pdf, 3.5 MB)