Old Masters (Alte Meister)

Adaption by Thom Luz and David Heiligers

Although he hates both – walking and visiting museums – the music critic Reger has been walking for over thirty years in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where he spends his mornings in the Bordone Hall. There he contemplates the so-called masterpieces, mainly Tintoretto's White-bearded Man, in order to discover with great pleasure and meticulousness in them the unfinished, the fragmentary and the flawed. Always at his side: the usher Irrsigler, who serves him as a contact and mouthpiece. In fact, over the decades, Reger has turned the museum bench into a thought and reading room. Surrounded by the Old Masters, in the midst of the ideal room temperature and perfect lighting conditions, he flicks through the books of the Great Spirits, seeks the truth and finds its gap. Basically, however, this crazy habit ensures his survival – especially after the death of his wife, who makes him feel his own imperfection painfully and clearly.

Thom Luz staged Thomas Bernhards 1985 novel appeared as a bright, desperate homage to the special talents of lonely people and sets out in search of the declaration of love behind the hate tirade.

Awarded as the "Best Performance" at the International Festival of Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant in Łódź 2019.