Fräulein Else

Young Else T., daughter of a good family, is spending the summer in a luxury spa town. She passes the time with tennis, mountain hikes and fine dinners – until a telegram from Vienna changes everything. Her mother writes, pleading that Else should, no actually, must restore her father’s ailing finances.

Else is instructed to ask for the money from a wealthy friend of the family: the art dealer Dorsday. He, considerably older than Else, is vacationing in the same spa hotel and has been constantly paying her compliments. She finds him detestable, but what can she do? The family’s good reputation must be preserved. Dorsday, however, deduces the hopelessness of Else’s situation – and uses it for a dark game of his own …

For many years, actor Julia Riedler and director Leonie Böhm have nursed the idea of ​​bringing this legendary stream of consciousness to the stage in a collaborative theatre play, rethinking it for our contemporary world – for that is precisely what drives Leonie Böhm’s work: canonical texts serve as an opportunity to re-establish a relationship with them and to incorporate her own interests and ideas. Deploying humour, playfulness and profundity, novel and mature interpretations emerge.

“Fräulein Else has been my personal role model for many years. Powerless in a situation of abuse of power, she tries to reclaim her ability to act. By exploring Schnitzler’s 100-year-old Me Too case in the theatre, the medium of a communal present, we can examine Else’s mortifying problem together and perhaps even solve it together.”

– Julia Riedler