Der blinde Passagier

In the organizer's words:

It was a minor sensation when numerous unpublished novels, stories, poems and plays by Viennese writer Maria Lazar were found in a locked box in England at the end of 2022 and handed over to the Austrian Exile Library. Born in 1895, Lazar was one of the most influential authors of Viennese modernism, but emigrated as a Jew to Denmark in 1933 together with Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel and was forgotten as an exile during her lifetime.

"The Stowaway" is set in the winter of 1938 on board a Danish coastal freighter lying in the roadstead off a German port in thick fog. Shortly before the anchor is weighed, a swimmer suddenly appears in the icy water. Carl, the captain's son, saves him from certain death and hides the stranger in the hold without further ado. He turns out to be a Jewish doctor on the run from the Nazis. But the presence of the stowaway on the small boat cannot be concealed for long ...

On the political eve of the Second World War, Maria Lazar tells an atmospherically condensed and nerve-wracking story of how the four-man crew react to the rescue of the stranger, who could put them in grave danger with the German authorities. The question of individual and collective responsibility soon arises - then as now. The production is directed by Laura Linnenbaum, whose productions at the D'haus include "The Visit of the Old Lady", "Mary Stuart" and "Mourning is the Thing with Feathers".