Max Frisch was born in Zurich. He worked, lived and died here. Zurich was the centre of his existence. He would repeatedly move away, only to return home, time and again. Zurich appears constantly in his work – as a city, a home town, a place of political resistance. “Trouble in Paradise” takes us on a journey through Zurich. We follow Frisch’s oeuvre and wander through this – his – city. The journey covers places in Zurich that are closely linked to Max Frisch – places that are dedicated to his literary work, speeches, interviews, diaries, notations, and prose. The latter offers dramatic potential, be it in the form of debate, micro-drama or interrogation, hymn or insult, a report by messenger, or a lamentation for the dead. We experience the world through Frisch’s spectacles. The life-themes of utopia, democracy, love and aging are assigned to respective locations: we move from the Federal Institute of Technology to the Kasernenareal (the city’s former barracks), the Old Botanical Garden, then down into a tunnel inside Zurich, and finally to the place of Frisch’s theatrical mission: the Pfauen.
