“May I ask for your name?”

As part of the Munich Biennale, the successful premiere of the music theater Die Befristeten could be seen on Monday (19.05) at the Cuvilliéstheater. Elias Canetti's thought experiment has been expanded to include current aspects and serves the audience a small but all the more far-reaching what-if tidbit: What if everyone knew the day they died? And that from birth. The certainty that comes with this seems somehow tempting at first. You can divide up your life, plan everything in detail. And you don't even have to start a relationship with someone who isn't going to live much longer anyway. The fixed date of death, the so-called "moment", is probably the greatest achievement of modern mankind. The regulation of life by a fixed date of death makes diseases, murders and wars superfluous. Suicides and accidents are presented as disorder of the system, which cannot occur at all as long as the Kapselan (Paul Wolff-Plottegg) (an unquestionable authority, who, however, actually only does what the law prescribes) keeps his watchful eye on people. His conviction: "People have realized that fifty safe years are worth more than an indefinite number of uncertain ones." So far, so bad: It is obvious that the existing social order cannot remain unquestioned for long. All humans carry as name that age, with which they will die. The announcement of one's true name is therefore unpleasant and basically also not permitted. The eighty-eighters are frowned upon by the more short-lived fellow citizens, since they have had their long life thrown at them without consideration. The realizations in the mother-son dialogue are those that the child will live to be thirty-eight years older than Mom, on the one hand, and that future good-night kisses are beginning to be counted on one's fingers, on the other. Another mother is relatively numb at her child's funeral (Seven), understandable when everything is just going according to plan. And a man tells: "I had a sister. [...] Her name was Twelve." Little by little, the system is questioned. Fifty (Götz Schulte), despite his relatively long life, is the first to set the ball rolling. Uncertainty and certainty are in constant conflict, the dreary and thus perfectly intense stage set slowly turns in circles, just like the characters who walk on it and are basically totally lost in the brave new world. That the certainty of the day of death brings about a maximum of joy in life (à la "Carpe Diem - Now more than ever!") seems more and more doubtful. After all, in the end it's always pressing somehow. Conclusion: convincing actors across the board in a musically impeccable underpinned future vision of a society that at some point has forgotten "to dance". So if you want to spend almost two hours of your already far too short lifetime, you'd be well advised to watch Die Befristeten.

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