MCNEAL

About the show

Jacob McNeal looks back on his life: Every single one of his novels was a bestseller—if you didn't know him, you knew his books. It was a successful life. Back when his wife was still alive, the one who longed to be like him. But a genius is a genius, McNeal thinks, and those good times are long gone. The writer still dreams of the Nobel Prize, but he's ill, lonely, and without ideas. Outside, artificial intelligence has changed the world, and how tempting the thought seems: his deceased wife's diaries, her story, which is his story—the perfect novel, secretly generated by a chatbot, published by Jacob McNeal. And suddenly, there it is again, the long-awaited success. But at what cost? With "The McNeal Case," the American playwright Ayad Akhtar, against the backdrop of how ChatGPT is changing our understanding of art, paints a profound psychological portrait of an artist acutely aware of his own mortality. The play premiered on Broadway in New York in 2024, was recently performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna, and is now having its German premiere in Düsseldorf with Thiemo Schwarz in the title role. It is directed by Philipp Rosendahl, who most recently directed Liv Strömquist's "Astrology" and Suzie Miller's courtroom drama "Prima Facie" at the D'haus.