Debts – the first 5000 years

You owe me your money your life

From the announcement of the Schauspiel Stuttgart:

From ancient societies and the Middle Ages to the civil protests of the recent past, it was mountains of debt that drove people into oppression and revolt. David Graeber, who is often referred to as a “mastermind” in connection with the Occupy movement, has dedicated a book to this eventful history of over-indebtedness and indignation, which breaks radically with the false morals of market capitalism.

In a broad historical arc, it explores the roots and theatres of our financial system: the silver mines of antiquity, the gold cellars of the Federal Reserve, the battlefields of the commodity wars and the mazes of the international monetary bureaucracy. In all these places witnesses have their say: bankers, warlords, pharaohs, historians, civil rights activists, victims, perpetrators, profiteers. They all report on the system of a debt economy that is on the verge of collapse in the face of dwindling resources and growing inequality worldwide.

David Graeber’s book Schulden (Debt) was published in New York in 2011 and also met with a great response in Germany. In Freiburg and Stuttgart, the “Non-Fiction Book of the Year” will be the starting point for a special co-production: director, performer and author Andreas Liebmann will bring the material to the stage in a project work realized with acting students.

In 400 pages Graeber dissects unquestioned ideas of debt and debt and shows what debt could mean: the cement of living together. But also what debt means historically: violence, dehumanization, slavery. A combination of meticulous research and pompous assertion. There are epic aspects to this large-scale litter. That’s why he’s gotta go on stage.

What Andreas Liebmann developed at Schauspiel Stuttgart as a co-production with Theater Freiburg and drama students of the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts, a scenic implementation of the ideas of the Occupy activist David Graeber, could be classified as part of the fashionable trend of “play development” or as a late example of agitprop. The realization of course proves that there are great differences in the genre. No navel-gazing, no exhibitionism of emotions, but a thematically and formally convincing production that fuses intellectual penetration and sensual presentation into a unity and involves the audience without harassing them – offered rather casually in the side playground and unduly appreciated.

Nachtkritik Theatertreffen Selection