Die Zeit und das Zimmer

A room, a girl, Marie, enters from outside, followed by more passers-by. Their fragmented stories are constantly changing, connections appear in a flash and are lost again. In the second act, the group has dispersed. The room turns into the setting for a number of short scenes. In rapid metamorphoses Marie Steuber, the girl from the street, transforms into lover, wife, boss, landlord, until finally, as an employee, she fails in her attempt to retrace an encounter that happened long ago. «In this play.... the past is always present in those elusive encounters, without any understanding about what was or is now or what could be. The characters created by Strauss have images, hopes and wishes etched into their brains, and so stumble through life without ever finding redemption, they live their lives in the chaos of feelings once large and now small, and halfhearted expectations, which bump into each other, repel each other. All comical characters therefore, are blown through this room in time (of those two acts).» (Sueddeutsche Zeitung)