About the work
Enjoy Schatz is an autofictional essay novel by Jovana Reisinger, an author, filmmaker and visual artist born in Munich in 1989; the book was published in October 2022 by Korbinian Verlag in Berlin. Reisinger developed the stage version together with Veronika Bachfischer, director Sarah Kohm and dramaturge Elisa Leroy. It premiered on 27 June 2024 at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin, with the author herself performing alongside Bachfischer.
Plot
At its centre is a writer in her thirties who bears a striking resemblance to her creator. After separating from her husband, she goes through a year of highs and lows between desire, relationships and emotional dependency, structured in four seasons from a giddy spring to an emotionally frozen winter. Again and again the story opens out into an essay on female pleasure, shame, beauty ideals, sexual harassment, background and class, while the line between the real author and her fictional double is deliberately kept blurred.
Cultural significance
The text asks why a woman who likes to dress glamorously and writes openly about sex is taken less seriously in the literary world, and whether artistic and sexual self-determination is possible at all. The Berlin premiere marked Reisinger's first appearance as a performer on a theatre stage; critics praised the interplay between the two performers but also felt that the evening touched on too many debates without going deeper.