Politicians and voters, the press and party colleagues as well as political opponents – they all meet at an election party.  It is shortly before the elections and everyone is excited. There are two candidates who have good prospects: the current mayor and Samuel W. – and there a lot of questions: »Who is Samuel W.? A thought? An idea? Does Samuel W. stand for a place? Or a time? Is he us?«

Written by Lukas Rietzschel, this play was commissioned by Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater. It poses many questions and consists of one hundred dialogues, as the author informs us in his preface. Between January and September 2022, writer and playwright Lukas Rietzschel conducted these interviews among others in Görlitz, where he has been living for the last few years. If it weren’t for the adjective »exemplary« in the title, you would think this play, no doubt, takes place in that same region. Lukas Rietzschel does retrace the life of a politician born in East Germany, the then German Democratic Republic, in an area where brown coal mines, smog, soot and dirt are omnipresent, where people think about leaving their home towns because they are no longer liveable; but all of that is not unique to the East.

Why do some people turn radical, while others look for consensus and reconciliation? That is Lukas Rietzschel’s main subject.


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