The Arsonists

Biedermann is outraged by the arsonists who have been starting fire everywhere – at least while he is at his local pub or on social media. But when they actually knock on his door, he politely asks them in, even though they make no attempt to hide their intentions. You have to have manners, after all. And you have to be civil: they are just two harmless peddlers. And if they aren't, it's better not to make an enemy of them. It would be unwise to afford that, even though you can afford (almost) everything else. Written as a political parable, the play targets a mindset that contributes to the success of destructive forces. How does it happen? Why, what for and by who are the impulses to understand simply pushed aside?

Director Fritzi Wartenberg was born in 1997 and openly admits how much she feels caught out by Max Frisch's text, initially noted down as a burlesque prose sketch and later adapted into a play. Wartenberg is co-founder of the FTZN-collective and received the Helene Weigel Theatre Prize in the framework of WORX, the funding programme for young directors at Berliner Ensemble.