Arnon Grunberg

Comedian

Message

Somewhere in the fall of 2015 I met Lucia Mann at a party in the Dutch embassy in Prague.
We became friends.
In March 2023, actually on March 1, she sent me a message me that a play she had written would be performed in New York, part of the rehearsal for truth festival. If I wanted to be involved, either as director or actor.
I read the text and I answered: ‘As director.’ Last night the dramatic reading of the play took place in the Bohemian National Hall.
August Zirner, a German-American actor – whom I met ten years ago in Munich, while I was doing research for a play for the Kammerspiele - played the father. An American stand-up comedian played the astronaut, who happened to be his son.
Directing taught me a lot, about human behavior, the actor and his survival instincts, the limitations of the director, his haughtiness. One director once told me: ‘You cannot direct the best actors, you can do what you want but you cannot direct them.’

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