THE STORIES THAT CAME BEFORE
Before This Play Shouldn’t Exist, Tim Honnef and Jonas Müller made a long run of Fringe shows about lost stories, strange discoveries, memory, truth and things that may or may not have happened.
Some of them may even have happened.
Mia spent years writing stories and hiding them away. After boxes of her work are found, Tim receives a note telling him where to open them. What follows is a story about friendship, memory, grief and wonder.
“A marvellous invention with Fargo-like claim to truth-telling.”
Stories disappear. So do cassettes, videotapes, notebooks and, eventually, memories. What remains is a bookstore, some chocolates and an unwanted ode to turmoil.
“Honnef has again crafted a thing of strange, intricate beauty.”
Amanda has a good job, a safe home, a loving family and a dog. In two hours, she says, none of it will matter. Jonas Müller calls it a true story. Whether that is actually true is another matter.
“The sort of experience we all come to the Fringe in search of.”
While clearing out his grandfather’s house, Tim finds hundreds of cassette tapes labelled “Project S”. He starts listening and discovers that his grandfather’s apparently ordinary life may have been part of something much bigger.
“A magical journey through the mind of one of the most fascinating experimental theatrical minds at the Edinburgh Fringe.”
Stories about family, growing up, missed opportunities, true love and lost memories come together around one question: how do you find silence in a world that never seems to stop making noise?
“This story is more complex than it seems, and it creeps up on you!”
An old man leaves a cardboard box on Tim’s doorstep. Inside are books, CDs, cassettes and videotapes that seem to have vanished from the world. Trying to work out where they came from leads into a story about memory, identity, half-truths and what people leave behind.
“Either way, it’s an enriching journey, well worth taking.”
Tim and Jonas stop speaking after something goes wrong between them. Jonas deals with it in the obvious way: he writes a show about it, then makes Tim perform it without reading the script first.
“In talking about art, they prove it’s worth making it.”
Jonas Müller has spent years writing what he believes is his masterpiece. Along the way there are promises, missed films, missed conversations and a girl at the cinema. A multimedia solo show about ambition, romance, regret and the trouble with trying to make something perfect.
“The piece reaches a touching and clever, if not wholly unexpected, finale.”
And then another box turned up. Which brings us to This Play Shouldn’t Exist.
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