About the work
“Schuld und Schein. Ein Geldstück” (roughly “Debt and Appearance: A Money Play”) is a theatre text by the German playwright Ulf Schmidt about how the monetary and financial system works; it is represented by the publisher Verlag der Autoren. In November 2012 Schmidt offered the premiere rights on the auction platform eBay, and the Metropoltheater Munich won them for 55 euros. There Jochen Schölch staged the world premiere on 4 July 2013 with a cast of five.
Plot
Instead of a continuous plot, the play strings together 24 short, vivid scenes and interludes featuring ten types, from the saver to the state banker. It traces how the gold coin first turns into the debt certificate and how, through loans, interest and derivatives trading, a system keeps inflating until it threatens to burst in the financial crisis. Its focus is on how countless individual debts add up to a crisis of the whole system in which responsibility evaporates.
Cultural significance
The Munich premiere production stayed in the repertoire for years and passed 100 performances by 2022. It won the prize for best production at the 10th Wasserburg Theatre Days in 2014 and took second place in the audience award at the 33rd Bavarian Theatre Days in Bamberg in 2015. Even before the premiere, the eBay auction of the rights had attracted nationwide attention.