Die Gehaltserhöhung (The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise) introduces variations on an invariable situation: An employee tries to bring himself to demand better pay. What is it about this story that interests you? 

First of all, I am interested in the play’s structure. There is a certain rhythm that emerges from the form, constructed like a mathematical calculation. The plot captivated me because it is a funny and absurd situation that we are all familiar with: We find ourselves at a mid- or low-level point in a hierarchy and we want more money or attention. You work out your ideas and psych yourself up to even picture yourself confronting your boss. For me, this is about the question of self-worth: What makes me valuable and what is a life worth living? Do I only have worth if I work hard and get praised by my boss? These issues begins inside us, in human psychology, and then extend all the way out to the big gaps in society.

The play criticises capitalism and yet it is a very lively and absurd text. Are the devices of comedy especially qualified to respond to this issue?

My approach is not to talk about grief with more grief, criticism with more criticism or solemnity with more solemnity. I need the devices of comedy to ask: How do we survive all of this? How do we overcome these fears? A great deal of what we humans do all day in the age of late capitalism is actually pretty silly. We’re faced with 15 different varieties of strawberry yoghurt on a supermarket shelf and seriously consider whether we want the kind with grains in it or the one with only 2 percent fat? That’s absurd! Bringing the absurdities of life to light and taking them to extremes, that’s exactly my thing.

Making art is a lot of work. What appears to be easy on stage often involves great efforts. 

Spectators often admire the actors for remembering large amounts of text. But learning lines is actually the easiest challenge: Working out how to make the audience laugh by intelligently and unexpectedly playing with their expectations takes an insane amount of work because it has to be extremely precise. Comedy is timing. You have to develop a sense for doing exactly the right thing at the right time – otherwise, it won’t be funny.

Creativity often doesn’t stick to office hours. Is it the love of what you’re doing that sometimes makes it hard to set boundaries?

There is work that feels easy because it is fun and fulfilling. I feel that making theatre falls into this category. And yet we do sometimes come up against limitations of the body or of health. My wish would be that institutions set less store by quantity. That being a good director would not mean making as many productions as possible.

The use of Artificial Intelligence is bringing changes to many spheres of life and work. Have you come into contact with it in your creative work?

Yes, I’m considering it in my work on Die Gehaltserhöhung because the history of work is currently entering a new phase due to AI. Perec himself looked at artificial intelligence as early as 1968, in his radio play Die Maschine (The Machine). So, a more than 50-year-old text has lead me deep into this topic at the moment. But the theatre thrives on the analogue: Real people working up a real sweat on stage and speaking actually learned lines in exactly this moment. Our early ancestors made art in caves. They tried to repeat their experiences for others by painting them or acting them out. That’s what we do in the theatre, too. I find it hard to imagine a theatre where avatars play Romeo and Juliet.

The interview was conducted by Lilly Busch.