„We learn very little and the boys trained at the Institute Benjamenta will get nowhere, since we are being made to look small and inferior in later life“, this is how Robert Walser's fictional diary of the boarding-school pupil Jakob von Gunten begins. The setting: a school for servants, which does not promote the development of its students but actually prevents it. The teaching staff seem fast asleep, dead or petrified, except for the horrifying headmaster Herr Benjamenta and his unhappy sister Fräulein Benjamenta. Jakob, a smart and resourceful anti-hero, leads a peculiar double life: at once arrogant and submissive, he's playing the game seriously, shifting between dream and reality. Walser's avant-garde novel presents us with an unsettling counterproject challenging today's delusion of efficiency. In the end only Jakob and the headmaster – a king dethroned – are left. Side by side they ride off into the desert, the great void.
- Cast and Team
- Gallery
Jakob von Gunten
Based on the novel by Robert Walser
Cast and Team
Direction
Barbara Frey
Stage Design and Costume
Bettina Meyer
Dramaturg
Amely Joana Haag
Piano and Celesta
Iñigo Giner Miranda
Lighting Designer
Rainer Küng
Assistant Director
Marco Milling
Assistant Stage Designer
Selina Puorger
Assistant Costume Designer
Selina Tholl
Prompter
Gabriele Seifert
Stage Manager
Aleksandar Sascha Dinevski
Gallery
