Maja Zade is a contemporary German playwright and chief dramaturg of the famous Berlin theatre Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, where changes premiered in 2014 in a production directed by Thomas Ostermeier.

The play explores the fragile relationship between the public and private spheres, politics and the media, and the ethics of empathy. Through the story of Nina and Mark, a long-married couple, Zade asks how contemporary society manages responsibility, compassion, and emotional truth at a time when reality itself is increasingly mediated and performed.

Nina and Mark have been living together for a long time and share common values. After breakfast, they will spend the whole day apart, each doing their own work, which is very different from their partner’s. But even though their paths diverge, they encounter similar themes. Mark used to be a successful corporate lawyer, but after an episode of burnout, he retrained as a teacher. Yet even here, he faces challenges; with his students, he encounters situations where, despite his clear good intentions, he doesn’t always know how to handle things with confidence. Nina is a politician working on a campaign to help victims of violence. When she visits a safe house for domestic violence victims, it becomes clear that her efforts, though sincere, may conflict with the wishes of those in need of help. In a political race, her behaviour, statements, and actions become the subject of all sorts of manipulation; she is accused of exploiting trauma to score political points, of abusing others’ suffering, and of feigning empathy. Everything she says or does can be turned on its head, exposed as a performance, and reduced to mere representation.

The play focuses on a series of confrontations between two characters, yet through these it creates a complex portrait of contemporary society. The production will bring together two ensembles, actors from the SNT Drama Ljubljana and the Prešeren Theatre in Kranj, to form a collective body that shifts between the roles of witnesses and performers, exploring together the phenomenon of authenticity in an era of the monetization of suffering.