by Beat Sterchi
adapted for the stage by Mike Müller
DIRECTED BY: Rafael Sanchez
PFAUEN
WORLD PREMIERE: 18.09.2025
approx. 3 hours (including break)
Part 1: 1 hour 20 minutes
Part 2: 1 hour 5 minutes
«Wyt u breit uf am Länge Berg die brävschti Chue, aber dr Ranze het sie weiss Gott bis hingenuse voll Stieregringe!»
Blösch, the magnificent lead cow at Knuchelhof and the pride and joy of the small family farm, is causing the farmer headaches. He eagerly awaits female offspring that he can use for dairy farming in the long term. But year after year, Blösch only produces male calves.
Technological change has long since radically transformed agriculture and its production processes. While neighbouring farms move with the times, Knuchel clings to tradition and craftsmanship. Instead of a milking machine, he brings in a Spaniard. Under the suspicious eyes of the villagers, barely able to speak the foreign language, Ambrosio arrives at the farm. He eagerly adapts to a gloomy, homely world in which he soon feels closer to the animals than to the people, and one person in particular makes a powerful impression on him: Blösch. The picture-postcard idyll is soon over. Seven years later, Ambrosio and Blösch meet again in the slaughterhouse.
Swiss author Beat Sterchi describes their journey with powerful, detail-oriented language and an unerring eye for everyday life. With a wink, he thwarts the romanticisation of rural life and ruthlessly illustrates the nightmare that is the slaughterhouse. The literary brilliance and topicality of the novel, published in 1983, continue to fascinate readers today. In their tried-and-tested, popular duo, Rafael Sanchez and Mike Müller adapt the text into Swiss German for the opening of the Pfauen theatre, translating the exploitation of humans, animals and the environment into modern questions of social coexistence.
Supported by the D&K DubachKeller-Stiftung
‘A powerful subject for the opening, and a powerful ensemble’
‘An ensemble that plays dairy cows with such virtuosity, as if it had never done anything else.’
‘Wonderful. Such verve, such vitality, magnificent! Just when you think you're about to descend into the depths of lowbrow theatre, there's a twist, a nuance, something wonderful.’
‘There has probably never been a more high-calibre portrayal of cows on the Peacock Stage. [...] You immediately fall in love with their beautifully singing cow Blösch.’
