Alain Claude Sulzer's Novel «Szenenwechsel» Bids Farewell to Theater as a Site of Social Significance

Swiss writer Alain Claude Sulzer's new novel «Szenenwechsel» opens with the tragicomic death of Simon Muthesius, an overweight and legendary former theater director who falls while changing broken light bulbs on a chandelier in his apartment on the Kurfürstendamm. His housekeeper Danuta, holding the aluminum ladder, follows his instruction to flip the light switch, and he falls to his death. His son Karl organizes a memorial service for the father who treated him with lifelong disinterest, driven by the father's single devotion to art. Guests from the Muthesius universe travel to attend, including his former wife Petra, the acting diva Nathalia, and the singer Siegfried, whom Muthesius demoted from tenor to stage manager. Sulzer assembles a cast of characters illustrating the immense pull of the theater and the humiliations people endure to stand on stage. The novel, published by Galiani Berlin in 2026 with 256 pages, is described as a great work that also induces sadness by showing what is slowly but surely being lost: the theater as a place of social significance. The review, rated five stars, appeared in the NZZ am Sonntag.