Learning to speak means learning other people’s rules

It begins with a sentence: ‘I want to be someone like somebody else once was.’ In Peter Handke’s ‘Kaspar’, this is no innocent longing to belong. The sentence becomes material for others to work on. Voices name things, practise words and order the world – and in doing so, they not only teach the speechless Kaspar to speak, but also mould him.

The play opens at Schauspiel Köln on Saturday, 31 October. Claudia Bauer directs, making her debut at the theatre. The venue promises an evening of grotesque humour, verbal acrobatics and live music. Before the premiere, it is too early to judge the production itself. Yet Handke’s play poses a question that reaches far beyond Kaspar’s fictional speechlessness: who gets to decide how something is said – and what counts as speaking correctly?

Words order the world

Handke published ‘Kaspar’ in 1968; the play was first staged that same year. It takes the historical figure of Kaspar Hauser as its starting point, but does not retell his life. Rather, the author describes his project as an attempt to show what can be done to a person by using language to make them speak. Kaspar begins with a single sentence. The prompters supply him with words, sentences and interpretations – an apparent form of help that also directs his gaze.

Here lies the play’s peculiar tension: language makes communication possible in the first place, but it is not neutral. Whoever passes on words also passes on distinctions, rules and expectations. A child does not simply learn to name things. They learn how others name them. Handke’s experiment with language can therefore be read as theatre about education and social conformity – not as a realistic case history of Hauser.

A musical power structure

For Cologne, Schauspiel Köln promises a ‘musical power structure’. Arpen Daks is composing the music; Daks and Elisabeth Coudoux will perform live. Patricia Talacko designs the set, Vanessa Rust the costumes. Jan Isaak Voges is responsible for the video art, Jan Steinfatt for the lighting. The cast includes Andreas Grötzinger, Fabian Reichenbach, Rebekka Biener, Katharina Schmalenberg, Annika Meier, Elias Eilinghoff and Julia Schubert. The production details thus promise an interplay of language, music and imagery – precisely how this works on stage will only become clear in performance.

Bauer’s work is new to Cologne audiences; this is her first production at the theatre. Her previous roles include resident director at Schauspiel Leipzig, and she has been engaged at the Residenztheater München since the 2024/25 season. Her Cologne production of ‘Kaspar’ puts the spotlight on a play whose critique of language remains relevant today: learning to speak is not just about words, but also about belonging and norms.

The cost of belonging

The theme can also be found within theatre itself. On stage, language helps determine who is understood, who can express themselves with confidence and whose way of speaking is seen as a deviation. This is not a claim about this particular production, but a question that Handke’s play passes on to its audience. The Cologne announcement emphasises humour and musical intensification; whether the result is lightness, unease or both remains to be seen at the premiere.

‘Kaspar’ begins on 31 October at 7.30pm at Schauspiel Köln’s Schauspielhaus. An introduction is scheduled for 7pm. In Handke’s play, Kaspar learning to speak does not simply mean that he is given a voice: it means that others help shape that voice. Therein lies the conflict – and the reason why this play’s questions are not resolved with the first intelligible sentence.