Birthday!

The unfounded joy of being alive.

Andreas Liebmann recalls his grandfather Franz Escher and the brain researcher Benedict Volk-Orlowski, with whom he celebrated his birthday shortly before his death. Both persons were accompanied by people who not only knew a lot, but also had a very special way of thinking and telling their knowledge together. Brain research, the experience of illness, circumnavigating the earth, observations of nature and greedily devoured world literature formed a unique system of thought and were equal sources of knowledge and imagination. Today, fragments of thoughts, ambivalences, echoes buzz. What remains of a human being when he is imported into the theatre? What happens when one’s own life will be extinguished anyway? Ana Berkenhoff and Andreas Liebmann combine biographical and fictional moments into a speculation about the process of knowledge production, memory, and exchange. Happy Birthday!

The play is an echo of the production “My Prehistoric Brain” at Theater Freiburg, which was realised by Andreas Liebmann in 2010.