Spitzenreiterinnen

Jovana Reisinger’s novel follows nine women from early spring to the summer of an unspecified year not far from the present. All of them live in or around Munich and they are all named after women’s magazines. They live and fail representatively, each of them alone and yet collectively, by the images and ideals of what it means to be a woman. Weddings, friendships, sackings – there are instructions about how to handle everything, which ultimately do nothing to help and raise expectations to unachievable levels. With biting wit and great empathy Reisinger tells of women who are working out how much room they have to manoeuvre between experiences of empowerment and repression, privilege and status anxiety, self-improvement and self-reliance. She shows happiness alongside the deepest despair, life crises and experiences of violence side by side with the minor excitements of everyday life. Jovana Reisinger and the director Yana Eva Thönnes will collaborate to write a stage adaptation of this novel, which was nominated for the 2021 Bavarian Book Prize.

«I would like the audience to be able to immerse itself in the idyllic, more or less normative Bavarian landscapes where the protagonists’ lifestyles that are trimmed by the patriarchy are revealed. Here the rigorously practised choreographies of enforced roles ultimately break apart until Lisa flies off the handle, Tina’s wounds are exposed and Brigitte’s itching stops. Bavaria – so often said to be the most beautiful country in the world: a setting, a programmed atmosphere, a world that appears beautiful where Laura, Lisa, Barbara, Verena, Jolie, Petra, Brigitte, Emma and Tina ultimately ask who is writing the script of their lives.» Yana Eva Thönnes