About the work
“74 Minuten” (“74 Minutes”) is a play by Raphaela Bardutzky, who has been resident playwright at Staatstheater Nürnberg since the 2025/26 season. It premiered on 5 October 2025 in the Nuremberg Kammerspiele, directed by Hannah Frauenrath. The title comes from three very different activities that each take 74 minutes: an average emergency call-out of the ambulance service, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, and cleaning 300 square metres of office space.
Plot
The play interweaves 74 minutes from the lives of six fictional characters whose names are modelled on musical tempo and expression markings. Among them are a former skier who accidentally triggers an emergency call while watching television, an ambulance crew, the cleaner Rubata and a tax lawyer who misses his train. In between come historical episodes about Ludwig van Beethoven, who refused to play for Napoleon's troops, and Wilhelm Furtwängler, who kept conducting under the Nazi regime. Some of the characters never have enough time, others have too much of it.
Cultural significance
Bardutzky treats time as a political category that shapes how people work, live and care for one another; the play touches on loneliness in old age, precarious work in healthcare and cleaning, tax evasion and unpaid care work. Reviews of the premiere praised the ensemble and the precisely built psychological miniatures, while some critics noted that the many themes are only touched upon.