Zurich Transit
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This screenplay by Swiss playwright and novelist Max Frisch was developed from an episode in his 1964 novel Gantenbein, or A Wilderness of Mirrors. At the center of both works is Theo Ehrismann, a man who cannot seem to change his life no matter how many times he resolves to do so. Chance comes to Theo one day upon returning from a trip abroad--he arrives home to read his own obituary in the paper. He shows up just on time for his own funeral and observes the attending mourners, and yet he is not able to reveal himself to them, and especially not to his wife. "How does one say that he is alive," wonders Theo.
Life, as Frisch said, "is the sum of events that happen by chance, and it always could as well have turned out differently; there is not a single action or omission that does not allow for variables in the future." Zurich Transit presents Frisch at the height of his dramatic powers and exemplifies his ardent believe in a dramaturgy of coincidence rather than causality.
Max Frisch
Max Frisch, born in Zurich in 1911, was one of the giants of twentieth-century literature, achieving fame as a novelist, playwright, diarist, and essayist. He died in 1991, the year Homo Faber was made by Volker Schlondorff into the acclaimed motion picture Voyager, starring Sam Shepard.
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Birgit Schreyer Duarte
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Birgit Schreyer Duarte, PhD, is a Dramaturg, Stage Director and Translator, born in Germany. She studied Dramaturgy in Munich and Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies in Toronto. There, she works in new play development and facilitates cultural exchange between Germany and Canada. She has worked in season planning at Canadian Stage and has directed classical and new plays in Toronto, Stratford/Ontario, and in Austria. She has translated over 25 plays from German to English.
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