Res Publica

The Cologne-based director and playwright duo Hofmann&Lindholm and the Staatstheater Stuttgart have teamed up to conduct a joint, long-term experiment titled “Res Publica”. Staging what they know to be a lie, they undertake – together with the audience – to construe their own reality. Over a period of two seasons, Hofmann&Lindholm will offer regular workshops, invite the public to participate in concentrated activities, and selectively assign research projects to theatre subscribers. The goal here is to translate musical scores, director’s notes and agreements into actions which are then implanted as subversive acts into the operations of the theatre and whose implementation should optimally result in a demonstration of artificially caused situations. The project organisers will work closely with the ensemble of the Schauspiel Stuttgart, the employees in all theatre departments and the audience to prepare for a large-scale ploy. The goal of all conspirative meetings will be to find out how durable joint agreements about a supposed reality can be – a reality which itself appears to be a construct.