Summerfolk (Sommergäste)

German adaption by Ulrike Zemme
Adaption by Daniela Löffner and David Heiligers

"We are not ‘the elite’ – we are the summer folk in our country – transients. All we are interested in is making our lives as comfortable as possible. We do nothing, and talk altogether too much."

The country residence of the lawyer Bassov and his wife Varvara is the meeting place for aprivileged party: doctors, writers, merchants, engineers. This uppermiddle-class group has left the city to spend the summer in the countryside.They have time and money and lead predominantly pleasant, carefree lives. Yetthey feel lonely, empty and lacking biographies, exhausted by themselves and tired of their liberties. Various ties, relationships and friendships are no help. They yearn for another future, which is redeemed by love and a more meaningful world.

They talk, argue, lament and discuss. How should they deal with this world-weariness? What kind of reality should they strive for? Why continue to rush, why pursue ideals? What visions should they create?

Varvara: "Why calculate and weigh up everything? ... How fearful we are of life! Weare drowning in self-pity!"

Maxim Gorky wrote Summer Folk in 1904, on the eve of the Russian Revolution. With his tableau of scenes and network of relationships, he wanted to present "the modern bourgeois-materialist intelligentsia". He portrays a comfortable society, which is no longer sure of itself and which rumbles with restlessness.

A cataclysmic turning point casts a shadow on these summer folk and theirrestless souls.