Altbau in zentraler Lage (UA)

// Invited to the 50th Mülheim Theatre Days 2025

This is the final straw: a plague of ghosts in her flat. Zoey is in her late twenties; she lives in a pretty reasonably priced apartment and works as a runner in her city’s most ambitious electro-club. Since she works at night and sleeps during the day, it only gradually dawns on her that serious changes are unfolding in her home. Her landlord has made several offers of compensation if she were to move out, she has rejected them all and tries not to think about it. She is well aware that it would be pretty much impossible for her to find an affordable new place in her neighbourhood. And then, one night, the ghosts suddenly arrive. When Zoey comes home and is just about to go to bed, she hears a music that goes straight through her – so unsettling and intense that she almost faints.

But her landlord is not at all interested in hiring a company of ghost hunters. On the contrary, he sees this massive ghost-infestation as an opportunity to go ahead with the demolition of the house so that he can construct a new building and sell it for a lot of money. For the next few weeks, Zoey suffers intensely from the plague of ghosts. The only ray of hope is her neighbour Trisha who is deaf and therefore hardly feels harassed by the ghosts at all. A friendship between her and Zoey develops.

In this commissioned play for Schauspiel Leipzig, Raphaela Bardutzky addressed the everyday horrors of the housing market, combining aesthetics from the genres of horror opera, penny dreadful and club culture. Similar to her previous play “Fischer Fritz”, “Altbau in zentraler Lage” explores the relationship between language and power – and provides a joint stage for two different languages: In this case, it is the spoken German language and German Sign Language.

Raphaela Bardutzky studied theatre dramaturgy, philosophy and literary studies at Bayerische Theaterakademie August Everding and LMU Munich. Her play “Fischer Fritz” received both a nomination for Heidelberger Stückemarkt and the “Förderpreis für Neue Dramatik” at Münchner Kammerspiele. It was premiered by Schauspiel Leipzig in the context of Autor:innentheatertage at Deutsches Theater Berlin in 2022. In 2023, she received the Bavarian Art Promotion Prize in the category of literature for “Das Licht der Welt”.

With this world premiere, Schauspiel Leipzig also continues its cooperation with Salome Schneebeli, who in 2023 / 24 successfully directed “America” by Giorgio Ferretti at Diskothek.