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After Tirso de Molina, written by almost Molière, with a little Mozart, da Ponte and Georges Bataille 

Scenic version by Matthias Langhoff and Eszter Biró

Music: Katalin Incze G.
Workshop 
AN OLD STORY
 
1.
Once, in a forgotten book in my library, I read about a girl who, while walking one shining summer day in Sevilla, discovered a church that supposedly was founded by the famous womanizer, Don Juan. On a brass plate, the girl read that it was Don Juan’s wish to be buried beneath the gate of the church. The penitent sinner wanted to be trampled upon even by the lowliest. The girl broke into such laughter that she could not, or did not want to, retain her urine. It trickled down both her legs, and a stream gushed on to the tombstone.
 
A few years later, I tried to find this church in Sevilla. Nobody could help me. Nobody knew about the grave or the church.
 
Finally, I found the grave and the urine drenched tombstone. But it was not in a church, nor in a cemetery, either. I found it near a building site or dump, 3464 km east of Sevilla. I bent down and wiped the centuries-old dirt from the weathered brass plate, and this is what I read there: “I did not want you to believe me. I wanted you to have no hopes about me. I did not want to be good. I wanted you to hate me, to laugh at me and despise me. But if I leave, you’ll realize just how much you miss me. Pay my servant.”
 
I left the place – the building site or the dump – uncomprehendingly. A fly that had inexplicably survived the frosty winter settled on my green patinaed hand.
 
!!! Go to the theatre before it’s too late. !!!
 
2.
On  my way home at the end of the  workday, I was leaving the rehearsal room, and between the bathroom and the staircase I noticed a cleaning woman watching me. She was grey, like most cleaning ladies, about my age, and she was smiling at me in a polite and friendly way.
 
I stumbled and she said, in German, with a slight accent: "Vorsicht" and "Guten Tag." then "Ach ja". I was reminded of Herta Müller. I recommend my work to her, to the cleaning lady.
 
Mattias Langhoff