by Beat Sterchi
for the stage by Mike Müller
DIRECTED BY: Rafael Sanchez
PFAUEN
WORLD PREMIERE: 09/18/2025
"In an instant, he knew loneliness. For the first time in his life, he felt small, foreign, and different."
Under the suspicious gaze of villagers, barely speaking the language, Spaniard Ambrosio arrives in Switzerland to work on a farm.
The tone is rough, the days long. Yet between man and animal, a deep bond emerges. Eagerly, Ambrosio adapts to this shadowy yet intimate world where animals have names—and one commands particular awe: Blösch. The Leitkuh (lead cow). Beautiful and strong, willful and stubborn, her rank unchallenged. But the idyll soon shatters.
Neighboring farms now use milking machines, revolutionizing agriculture and production. Seven years later, Ambrosio and Blösch reunite—in a slaughterhouse.
Swiss author Beat Sterchi traces their journey with raw, obsessively detailed prose and an unerring eye for the mundane. Wryly dismantling rural romanticism, he unflinchingly exposes the nightmare of the slaughterhouse. The novel’s literary brilliance and enduring relevance (first published 1983) continue to captivate.
In their signature collaboration, Rafael Sanchez and Mike Müller adapt this text for the reopening of Pfauens, transforming its exploration of human, animal, and environmental exploitation into urgent questions about modern society.
Supported by the D&K DubachKeller-Stiftung
