Manzini Studies at Theater Duisburg: René Polesch's Theater Between Love and Crack
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When the Stage Becomes a Thought Experiment
René Polesch's I Don't Know What a Place Is, I Only Know Its Price will be presented on February 26, 2027, as a guest performance of the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin at the Theater Duisburg. The production combines sharp linguistic wit, philosophical questions, and a deliberately fragmented dramaturgy into a theatrical evening about love, memory, and the crack in what seems familiar.
Between Couch, Forestage, and A Midsummer Night's Dream
An actress enters the scene and confuses the fore-stage with the couch of a psychiatrist. She wants to tell of a terrible A Midsummer Night's Dream – and thus opens a surreal space of thought, where Shakespeare, longing for love, and the mechanics of theater merge into one another.
A linear plot is not at the center. Polesch's text works with leaps of thought, repetitions, and seemingly casual sentences that only unfold their effect in echo. The dramaturgy follows less of a classical arc of tension than a linguistic movement: It feels around, stumbles, re-establishes, and thereby creates an intense stage experience.
Polesch's Directing Between Comedy and Existential Question
René Polesch has developed an unmistakable form of contemporary theater in which text, acting, and direction are inseparably connected. His characters speak about the theater while simultaneously bringing it into existence. The comedic lies closely alongside the abyssal, the philosophical thought next to the grotesque gesture.
The production originally emerged in 2018 at the Schauspielhaus Zurich and was taken over by the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. In the Theater Duisburg, the audience encounters a work that does not treat the stage as a fixed place, but as a movable experimental setup: Here, roles are switched, perceptions are shifted, and certainties are brought out of balance with great linguistic precision.
An Ensemble with Distinct Stage Presence
Kathrin Angerer, Marie Rosa Tietjen, and Martin Wuttke carry the evening with high physical and linguistic presence. Their playing style oscillates between laconic directness, grotesque exaggeration, and moments of surprising tenderness. The set design by Barbara Steiner and the costumes by Sabin Fleck support a theatrical aesthetic where transformation is not explained, but enacted before the audience's eyes.
The theatrical atmosphere thrives on this interplay: A sentence can strike like a punchline, in the next moment revealing an existential question. Light, space, and acoustics do not create a naturalistic illusion but an open playing field for thoughts, bodies, and contradictory feelings.
An Evening About Love, Time, and the Crack
Polesch leads his audience back to Shakespeare while simultaneously moving far away from a classical retelling. It is about love and the moment when familiar orders start to crack. It is precisely these breaks that generate the peculiar energy of the production: The audience does not experience a closed teaching piece, but an evening that releases questions and rearranges perceptions.
The performance lasts approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes and takes place without an intermission. It begins at 7:30 PM in the Great House of the Theater Duisburg.
Conclusion: Theater as an Open Movement of Thought
I Don't Know What a Place Is, I Only Know Its Price promises a distinctive, linguistically powerful, and sensually charged stage experience. Those who want to experience René Polesch's unique combination of discourse theater, absurd humor, and precise acting live will find an evening full of surprising twists at the Theater Duisburg. Secure your tickets now and experience how a stage space becomes a place for love, doubt, and new thoughts.
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