Rogue Piece (Gaunerstück)

"My future is now – or never."

Maria and Jesus Maria are twins. Their father, a Spaniard, to whom they owe their unusual names, leaves their mother when they are very young. She becomes an alcoholic and socially marginalised. At some point the children leave their mother too, determined to seize the opportunities they never had and to use their own initiative to take what life owes them – using underhand methods if necessary. The twins end up in a curious milieu as neighbours of Madame Bonafide, the transsexual fortune-teller and a raucous sex-film maker. Maria and Jesus Maria’s optimism is as great as their lust for life. Both of them dream of the big coup. When Maria checks out the terrain for breaking into a jewellery shop, the owner Mr Wunder offers her a deal: they rob him, he gets the insurance money, they return the loot to him and they get their cut. A watertight plan. ‘Gaunerstück’ is a work commissioned by the Deutsches Theater: based on a real story, Dea Loher tells a story that veers between social tristesse and criminal banality, lust for life and death.

A piece commissioned for the Frankfurter Positionen 2015 – an initiative of the BHF Bank Stiftung.