Der letzte Gast (The final guest)

In a taxi, Klara meets a mysterious stranger. She invites him into her garden. He stays indefinitely as a guest. Since he rarely speaks, they call him “Blue”, after the colour of his jacket. What is strange? Is Blue a stranger? Does Blue have to divest himself of all of his strangeness if he wants to stay in Klara’s garden? And who has the prerogative to decide what is right and wrong?

“Der letzte Gast (The final Guest)”, which Árpad Schilling wrote with Éva Zabezsinszkij for Berliner Ensemble – and specifically for the theatre’s actors – is a play that revolves around the central questions of how strangeness defines and expresses itself and how we as a society deal with the strange.

The Hungarian author and director Árpád Schilling, winner of the Stanislavsky Prize and Premio Europa, is the founder of the legendary independent theatre Krétakör and his works have been presented at theatres like Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and the Vienna Burgtheater. He has been declared an enemy of the state by the Hungarian government. Since the beginning of this season, the artist and his family live in Paris.