Fetch Push-Up Compiled By Roland Schimmelpfennig Distributed As Publication
on Push-Up
who work in big office buildings for giant monolithic corporationsand I know this, because I worked in one for thirteen yearsdo plenty of productive stuff but too much time is spent posturing, primping, and planning: figuring out how to tell the boss soandso or when to go over his head or when to play politics behind her back.
It's a sexy, scary, lonely world, and it's perfectly captured in Roland Schimmelpfennig's sharp and entertaining play Push Up, In three connected vignettes, plus a neat prologue and epilogue, Schimmelpfennig reveals the machinations that seem to mean so much but ultimately amount to so little in the socalled "professional" lives of business people on the way up and down.
Each of the main scenes is an encounter between two sparring members of an unidentified but obviously large European enterprise, In the first segment, Angelica, a highpowered executive who is also the wife of the head of the company, is interviewing Sabine, a younger rising star in the firm, for a position at the Delhi office.
In conversation that's barely civil and in monologues delivered to us, the women expose their ambitions and their unhappinesses: they're alike, of course, and not satisfied with their lives, That Sabine is not going to get the job is a foregone conclusion, but the murky path toward resolution of this situation makes for compelling eavesdropping,
Even more intriguing is the rivalry/romance between Robert and Patricia in the next scene, They had a oneevening stand in the boss's office, at the Christmas party last year now they're supposed to work together on a new television commercial for whatever it is that this company sells.
Again, cooperation seems impossible what we have here, as someone once said, is a failure to communicate that's almost tragic in terms of the missed connections that it has brought about.
The final vignette is the strongest, introducing us to Hans and Frank, a boss and subordinate who are vying for the same position that Delhi office job, Though an element of competition is certainly present, what's central here is the emptiness of the lives surrounding these allegedly meaningful careers, The older man spends hours every day on his exercise machine, bulking up and watching his diet for whom, while the other wiles away his nights on the Internet, downloading free porn and fantasizing about a Russian model named Natasha.
Schimmelpfennig illuminates most sharply here the sad existences of his charactersthe desperation and alienation shared by all six of these people who have seemingly surrendered some component of their humanity for the sake of "getting ahead.
"
And although this may not seem like radical new territory for exploration, Push Up manages to make it feel both fresh and pertinent by juxtaposing internal and external conversations in each scene.
We get inside the heads and hearts of these folks, and see the truths that they cannotor will notacknowledge, Shrewdly, Schimmelpfennig frames this trio of dialogues with two monologues that point up, in stark contrast, another way to livea way that lets some of the rest of the world into an office routine that, let's face it, can never be wholly nurturing or natural on its own.
Heinrich and Maria, the two "blue collar" security personnel who deliver these two monologues, remind us that politics, power, and posturing are worthless without context, Lovely play. Schimmelpfennig crawls into the mind of the characters, Men and women aren't always coming from different planets, To be read with chocolate, nuts and crisps, Una obra estupenda, en la que se reúnen cuatro historias diferentes en el marco de una empresa multinacional,
It's a sexy, scary, lonely world, and it's perfectly captured in Roland Schimmelpfennig's sharp and entertaining play Push Up, In three connected vignettes, plus a neat prologue and epilogue, Schimmelpfennig reveals the machinations that seem to mean so much but ultimately amount to so little in the socalled "professional" lives of business people on the way up and down.
Each of the main scenes is an encounter between two sparring members of an unidentified but obviously large European enterprise, In the first segment, Angelica, a highpowered executive who is also the wife of the head of the company, is interviewing Sabine, a younger rising star in the firm, for a position at the Delhi office.
In conversation that's barely civil and in monologues delivered to us, the women expose their ambitions and their unhappinesses: they're alike, of course, and not satisfied with their lives, That Sabine is not going to get the job is a foregone conclusion, but the murky path toward resolution of this situation makes for compelling eavesdropping,
Even more intriguing is the rivalry/romance between Robert and Patricia in the next scene, They had a oneevening stand in the boss's office, at the Christmas party last year now they're supposed to work together on a new television commercial for whatever it is that this company sells.
Again, cooperation seems impossible what we have here, as someone once said, is a failure to communicate that's almost tragic in terms of the missed connections that it has brought about.
The final vignette is the strongest, introducing us to Hans and Frank, a boss and subordinate who are vying for the same position that Delhi office job, Though an element of competition is certainly present, what's central here is the emptiness of the lives surrounding these allegedly meaningful careers, The older man spends hours every day on his exercise machine, bulking up and watching his diet for whom, while the other wiles away his nights on the Internet, downloading free porn and fantasizing about a Russian model named Natasha.
Schimmelpfennig illuminates most sharply here the sad existences of his charactersthe desperation and alienation shared by all six of these people who have seemingly surrendered some component of their humanity for the sake of "getting ahead.
"
And although this may not seem like radical new territory for exploration, Push Up manages to make it feel both fresh and pertinent by juxtaposing internal and external conversations in each scene.
We get inside the heads and hearts of these folks, and see the truths that they cannotor will notacknowledge, Shrewdly, Schimmelpfennig frames this trio of dialogues with two monologues that point up, in stark contrast, another way to livea way that lets some of the rest of the world into an office routine that, let's face it, can never be wholly nurturing or natural on its own.
Heinrich and Maria, the two "blue collar" security personnel who deliver these two monologues, remind us that politics, power, and posturing are worthless without context, Lovely play. Schimmelpfennig crawls into the mind of the characters, Men and women aren't always coming from different planets, To be read with chocolate, nuts and crisps, Una obra estupenda, en la que se reúnen cuatro historias diferentes en el marco de una empresa multinacional,
Everyone wants to get to the executive suite, Everyone wants the Delhi job, Everyone wants sex, everyone wants love, So they push for it, Published alongside the U. K. premiere
at the Royal Court, a sexy new play from an exciting new German writer,