About the work
Frau Yamamoto ist noch da (Mrs Yamamoto Is Still Here) is a play by Dea Loher, one of the most important and distinctive voices in German-language theatre. The work premiered in September 2024 simultaneously at the Schauspielhaus Zürich and in Tokyo; the German-language premiere followed on 11 October 2024 at Schauspiel Stuttgart, directed by Burkhard C. Kosminski.
Plot
In an episodic chamber play of some two dozen loosely interwoven scenes, Loher sketches snapshots of people whose paths cross, who meet briefly and lose one another again. A man muses on a magnetic heart; a couple cannot move in together because the woman must care for her elderly mother; a child asks where one goes when one has died. At the centre stands the title's barely tangible Mrs Yamamoto, whose flat is to be re-let and of whom no one knows whether she is still alive or already dead. Around this empty space the figures circle, and with them the great questions of existence, loss, death and love, loneliness and the search for closeness.
Cultural significance
With a light touch, Dea Loher binds the isolated individual fates into a cheerful "endgame" and a portrait of an insecure, speechless society. In a world grown unreliable, language becomes a foothold and theatre a place of self-reassurance. The work confirmed Loher's reputation as a master of pared-down, highly musical dialogue and a precise observer of human isolation.