The Austrian author Magdalena Schrefel, who lives in Berlin, took her own family constellation as the starting point for a “play regarding present and absent voices and bodies”. The brother, who suffers from various physical impairments, finally gets a diagnosis at the age of 24: he has a genetic defect that only two other people in the world have besides him.

This genetic defect prevents him from walking, limits the motor skills of his hands, impairs his vision and, over time, will completely rob him of his voice. He wants to make provisions for the time following that and get not just one, but several substitute votes. A rough Monday voice, a gentle seductive voice, a strong argumentative voice. “And a voice that sounds the same on the outside as I do on the inside: Determined, courageous, confident.” He and his sister are organizing a voice casting for it.

Schrefel has written an inclusive sibling story that is as empathetic as it is poetic, as clever as it is self-reflective. Two people are bound by great affection but under extremely aggravating conditions. Every benefit is also associated with a contradiction. For this purpose, fundamental questions are asked not only in the interpersonal but also in the artistic: What is speaking? What is writing? What is gaming?

The question of representation is also raised – and Bues, who premiered Schrefel’s “was brennt, was brennt” at the Schauspielhaus Graz last year, solves it at the Kunstfest Weimar with her co-director Anouschka Trocker with a great cast: the filmmaker and screenwriter Leonard Grobien, who is in a wheelchair due to his brittle bones, plays the actor who plays the brother, Florentine Krafft the actress in the role of the sister – sounds complicated, but is completely convincing, always funny and not a bit sentimental. Puppeteer Sarah Zastrau adds an additional dimension to the dialogue in some scenes.

For this purpose, set designer Heike Mondschein has placed a two-part stage in the atmospheric hall of the old E-Werk, which functions as a side venue of the National Theater Weimar, which can easily be transferred to the Kosmos Theater and the Wiener Schauspielhaus: a small pedestal, a blue-green photo studio background, a few wheelchair ramps. In the casting scenes, Samuel Koch is present via video, and recordings from the radio play produced at the same time in cooperation with Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Ö1 have been incorporated.

After an hour there was great applause for the team, the author and her brother, who was also present. The new Schauspielhaus quartet (besides Bues there are also Martina Grohmann, Mazlum Nergiz and Tobias Herzberg, who supervised the evening as dramaturg) passed its first test. Already today, Sunday, there is already the next Austrian premiere at the Kunstfest Weimar: the Weimar opera director Andrea Moses stages the music theater “Missing in cantu – your palaces are empty” by Johannes Maria Staud (music) and Thomas Köck (libretto).

(SERVICE – “The many voices of my brother” by Magdalena Schrefel (UA), cooperation text: Valentin Schuster, direction: Marie Bues, Anouschka Trocker, set and costumes: Heike Mondschein. With Leonard Grobien, Florentine Krafft and Sarah Zastrau. E- Plant Weimar, further performances on September 2nd and 3rd, 5 p.m., www.kunstfest-weimar.de)