Alte Meister: nach dem Roman von Thomas Bernhard

In the organizer's words:

A special production is taking place at the Hessian State Museum in Wiesbaden: Between paintings, installations and sculptures, the private scholar Atzbacher, the music philosopher Reger and the museum attendant Irrsigler meet and discuss art, our society and their lives. And the audience is right in the middle of Thomas Bernhard's "Old Masters"!

For over thirty years, music critic Reger has been going to the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna every other day, partly because of the ideal room temperature and partly because of Tintoretto's "Portrait of a White-Bearded Man". He has also been meeting Irrsigler there for over thirty years. He is a museum attendant and loves his uniform. The only thing he might have loved more was a police uniform. Over the years, Irrsigler has become Reger's mouthpiece and ensures that he can view Tintoretto's paintings undisturbed. Viewing art had become a kind of survival strategy for Reger and he developed it to perfection: He studies every work of art that is considered finished until its flaws are uncovered. All old masters and great minds are imperfect. And so is life, as Reger is forced to realize when he falls into an existential crisis.

Director Amalia Starikow, who has just made her directorial debut at the Schaubühne Berlin, stages Thomas Bernhard's text about the meaning of art and the deconstruction of the belief in genius where it belongs: in the middle of the exhibition rooms of the Landesmuseum Wiesbaden.