They Are Dying Out

By Peter Handke
California Institute of the Arts, 2013

“It suddenly occurs to me that I am playing something that doesn’t event exist, and that is the difference. That is the despair of it.”

A reimagining of Peter Handke’s 1975 play, The Are Dying Out. Set in the contemporary world of hyper-capitalism, super-tycoon Herman Quitt forms a price-fixing pact with his four biggest competitors to monopolize their industry. He finds himself inexplicably suffering from disturbingly irrational thoughts. As Quitt’s financialized and transactional psyche comes into collision with extreme poetics, the “rational” practices of a capitalist economy brings about a fatal personality crisis.