Anna Schäfer - SCHLAFENDE HUNDE

What happens during a sleepless night? Marie, the central character in Anna Schäfer's solo show SCHLAFENDE HUNDE, knows the problem well: like so many people, she can't sleep because she can't switch her thoughts off. In the dark, every strange and wildly funny idea she's ever wanted to share with friends, enemies, and the world at large comes bubbling up.

In a fast-paced, musical, and sharply funny monologue, Anna Schäfer plays, sings, and spins through the defining issues of our time. She switches between figures and characters at breakneck speed, sketching a satirical portrait of contemporary society - personal, political, pointed. A headlong journey across theatre, cabaret, comedy, and storytelling.

In the first half, she uses her cabaret instincts to expose our zeitgeist-soaked social life - pushed to the point of absurdity until it reveals itself as a collective mistake: the fashionable posturing, the pull of superficiality, the chase for recognition and success. In the second half of the piece, written by Dietmar Jacobs, Schäfer shows her acting depth and warmth in a shift that moves into existential territory - where the light and the heavy collide, and a stark conclusion takes centre stage: life as a race toward death, and the urgent question of how much we need imagination, play, literature, and art just to bear it.