MAMA & SAM

Sarah Kuttner’s novel is brought to the stage for the first time: what remains when a mother dies, the money is gone, and an endless chat with a scammer becomes the only trace left behind? A theatrical evening about love scams, loss, and the search for a closeness that was impossible during her lifetime.

A daughter stands in her mother’s apartment after her sudden death. The mother is gone—and so are all her savings. What remains are questions: why is the apartment so messed up, the mailbox overflowing? And how is it possible to lose one’s own mother to a marriage scammer?
In her novel, television host and author Sarah Kuttner tells the story of a woman who was searching for love and ended up meeting a romance scammer. She fell in love and looked away. In the end, she left nothing behind but a seemingly endless exchange of messages with the scammer. Above all, it is the story of a daughter left behind, facing a void where her mother once was.
The daughter starts reading the messages that were never meant for her to see—reading things about herself she never wanted to know. And yet, slowly and almost imperceptibly, the void begins to fill with a sense of closeness that was impossible for both of them during the mother’s lifetime. This novel about guilt, grief, and the uncomfortable intimacy of an estate is adapted for the stage for the first time at Theater Bonn.

Sarah Kuttner was born in Berlin in 1979 and works as a television host. She became widely known through her shows Sarah Kuttner – Die Show (VIVA) and Kuttner. (MTV), and has since then worked on various projects for ARD. On ZDFneo, she hosted the urban lifestyle programme Bambule and the talk show Kuttner plus Zwei. Since 2016, she has produced and hosted the monthly event series Kuttner’s Beautiful Nerd Night, and since 2017 she has co-hosted the podcast Das kleine Fernsehballett on Deezer with Stefan Niggemeier. Her columns for Süddeutsche Zeitung and Musikexpress were published by Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. Her debut novel Mängelexemplar (2009) was on the bestseller list for several weeks, followed by Wachstumsschmerz (2011), 180 Grad Meer (2015), and Kurt (2019). Sarah Kuttner lives in Berlin.

Simon Solberg, born in Bonn in 1979, studied acting at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. After working in Düsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main, he made his directorial debut at Schauspiel Frankfurt in 2005 with Odyssee reloaded. Over the next two years, Solberg served as resident director at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, and during the 2012–13 season as resident director and co-artistic director at Theater Basel. With his production of Urgötz, he opened Armin Petras’s tenure as artistic director at Schauspiel Stuttgart in the fall of 2013. Solberg’s work has also been presented at venues including the Münchner Volkstheater, the Deutsches Theater Berlin, the Schauspiel Köln, the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, and the Staatsschauspiel Dresden. Since the 2018-19 season, Simon Solberg has been the resident director at Theater Bonn and has staged plays such as RETHINKING OUR WORLD, OF MICE AND MEN, and CARNAGE.