Best Friends - Gaby Schall & Judith Brandstätter

BY Peter Blaikner
DIRECTED BY Peter Blaikner and Bernd Weissig
WITH Gaby Schall & Judith Brandstätter
RUNNING TIME approx. 100 min
INTERMISSION after approx. 60 min

ABOUT THE PLAY
Jeanine and Bernadette, two friends in their prime, want to do something. But just the view from their apartment balcony brings them into a world where real life is at home. The apartment is the stage, the world is the audience, which can hardly stop laughing. Jeanine and Bernadette share stories about their lives as women, which mostly revolve around one thing: men and dogs, dogs and men. But their own relationship with each other is not neglected either, as they are indeed best friends.

The crude and comical picture stories of the great French cartoonist from the 1970s, Jean-Marc Reiser, provide the starting point for this comedy full of absurd situations.

ABOUT PETER BLAIKNER
Peter Blaikner was born in 1954 in Zell am See (Austria). He studied German and Romance languages in Salzburg, then spent two years as a lecturer at the University of Poitiers (France) and has since lived as an author, songwriter, and cabaret artist in Salzburg. He began as a songwriter and translator of the songs of the Frenchman Georges Brassens, performs chanson and cabaret programs, writes poetry, stories, plays, and musicals (including "Schwejk" with Konstantin Wecker). The book "Aus dem Innergebirg" is a bestseller in his home region of Pinzgau. His children's musicals (music by Cosi M. Goehlert) are well-known far beyond the borders, are performed with great success, and have reached over a million theatergoers in the German-speaking world ("Ritter Kamenbert," "Das Hausgeisterhaus," "Alex, die Piratenratte," "Astromaxx, der Sternfahrer," "Pommes Fritz und Margarita"). In 2005, he received the Rauriser Förderpreis for Literature for his novel manuscript "Die Verteidigung des Sommers," a story about the first peasant uprising in the Salzburg region (1462).

Peter Blaikner has always followed his own path, is individual and cannot be categorized, he has mischief in his heart and a few dreams in his eyes. He is suspicious of whiners, rejects rigid systems, and finds liberation in laughter. The characters in his plays provoke laughter, and even when they are wicked, they are merely ridiculous. He plays with words and sounds, sings and writes about the freedom to embark on new horizons at any time, about the unforeseen, about the greatest adventure, which is life itself.