EINE MINUTE DER MENSCHHEIT

About the show

WORLD PREMIERE How can humans manage to live with the awareness that we are not alone, that we share the Earth? Stanisław Lem's text One Minute of Humanity, published in 1983, raises this question with the help of a fictional book review: The text is a book about a book that attempts to record what happens in the world in one minute, i.e., what humanity experiences, does to each other, and destroys in sixty seconds. It discusses statistics on death, reproduction, overpopulation, and resource scarcity, but also the art produced per minute, church taxes paid, and animals eaten by humans. The outcome of this absurd attempt to create an “extreme summary of humanity” and thereby get to the bottom of what it means to be human is rather disastrous. The thought experiment is made more difficult by the nature of time itself, because at the moment it is being portrayed, time continues to pass and the statistics that have just been collected are already losing their relevance. But where are the limits of the statistical method? Which areas of human life, feelings, and actions escape the law of large numbers? And how can all this actually be endured? Stanisław Lem is considered one of the most important science fiction authors of the 20th century. In his extensive and creatively exuberant work, he predicted numerous technological developments of the future—from robotics to the internet to space travel. Novels such as Solaris and The Futurological Congress have become classics of fantasy literature. Anita Vulesica, who is well known at the Deutsches Theater for her productions of Darling, The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise, and The Bald Soprano as a specialist in absurd and tragicomic theater, is now discovering a previously little-known text by Lem for the stage.