Theatre
Top Dogs
Not translated into English
Urs Widmer · 1996
Synopsis
Senior executives laid off in successive restructurings find themselves at the New Challenge Company, an outplacement agency tasked with putting them back on the job market. Deprived of the company that served as their identity, these former powerful figures must learn anew where they stand, and from bosses they become the losers of a game whose rules they set only yesterday. Each recounts his fall and practises making a comeback, under the gaze of the others.
Context
The play was first staged in 1996 at the Theater am Neumarkt in Zurich, directed by Volker Hesse, and published by the Verlag der Autoren. The Dürrenmatt Centre sees in it a royal drama of the economy, in which the former powerful become trapped tragic heroes; an American critic sees in it the question of the consequences of over-organised work. Invited to the Theatertreffen in Berlin in 1997, it was then staged in Lausanne and at Saint-Gervais, and then by Daniel Benoin, who translated it in 1999.
Who it is for
A group play about men who have lost their jobs; it reads as a social satire rather than as an intimate drama.
Prizes and reception
Mülheim Dramatists Prize, 3sat Prize and Theater heute Prize in 1997; the text that made its author known in the theatre.