Crawling your way back to Absurdism, Baby
Absurdist play Crawl for Pianodrome
Salvador Kent brings Crawl, a piece of absurdist theatre by German writer Till Schindler to the Pianodrome Bruntsfield next week. Ahead of the performances on Monday 29 and Tuesday 30 June, Kent reflects on what on earth Absurdist Theatre means in 21st century Edinburgh. Or whether is even has meaning at all.
Take it away Mr Kent!
Directing the absurd had me at my wits end. We were in a typical grassroots theatre rehearsal space, that is to say, a massive abandoned call centre office in the East End of Glasgow (provided by the ever-generous Martyr Theatre). Two of my diligent actors were crawling about the carpet floor whilst I was trying to work out how best to explain a hole in the darkness.
Crawl Design one
I wasn’t doing the best job, and I had spent a week trying to interpret a play that is keenly uninterpretable. Next week, we will be presenting Crawl at the Bruntsfield Pianodrome, but first I’d like to explain how this strange, gorgeous play, is against interpretation in a keenly contemporary sense. With the help of some final interjections from my friend, the playwright Till Schindler.
Till is unique. He is a Berliner who has decided to learn English with such idiosyncrasy that his command of the language is better than the vast majority of the native population. He unashamedly toys with rhythms, puns and neologisms in such a way that his work becomes impossible to interpret chronologically.
interrogates
This play demands you to interpret it as if you were a child: with the sort of playfulness that uses illusion to smash up reality. But in the same way the child’s game is serious to them, the work is serious to Till. His is a theatre that interrogates everyone involved. The audience get their heads sent spinning and the director loses five years of their life.
And the actors? Well, the actors are demanded to insert themselves into what are merely rhythmic constructs and then breathe their own personhood into them – all the while completing physical actions equivalent to a week of workouts.
Crawl design two
I knew all of this, as I had directed a staged reading of the work last October. I skimmed the surface of the play, being interested in only the rhythms of it. Till approved, and so I was directing it for real now. But I knew there was more. Indeed there was. Crawl had always been a riddle, so I dove into it in search of answers, and this has formed half my process. I found many things on my journey, small games and riddles that built a bigger picture — like a painting by Dali where the image is beautiful but there are debates at stake in the symbols.
The culmination of my search for answers was that strange failure of a rehearsal in Glasgow. It was raining outside when I got into Edinburgh. Till had tasked me with building a Zoo and a Sculpture onstage. My mistake was to think this was an allegory. I sought him out in the Dagda bar. He had been playing football in the rain. I was exhausted; his play had beaten me. He looked pleased to see me, but as the subject of the play came up, he became concerned. “I’ve been following the cast group chat. I ought to come into rehearsal, because I don’t want anyone knowing what a Myrmidon is”.
utterly shocked
I remember being thirteen years old and utterly shocked by a production of Enrique Buenaventura’s “La Orgia”, a thin political allegory told by a carnival of half-nude outcasts. A thirteen year old couldn’t understand that — but I did, in my own way, and the memory stuck.
As we go through our lives theatre doesn’t tend to give us the same shockwave – but only because we do not allow ourselves to confront the unknown. I say that as an audience member, but as a director too. I think Till’s play is about what it is to confront this unknown — in some sense it is to be overtaken by darkness and its tragedy. In another sense it is to free yourself.
Crawl Posters
Sometimes, when I am in nature, I sense an elusive, strange feeling. All of our buildings and rooms have been constructed on top of this earth which I look at now from a footpath. I know what it is to negotiate with what is constructed. I’m not sure what it is to interact with the grooves, valleys and wrinkles that remain. Perhaps even they have become human, cultivated by fences and farms. You and I have inherited those fences. What would it mean to break them down?
A conversation with Till, to finish these reflections.
Hello Till.
Hello Salvador.
Why Crawl?
Crawling has become the natural and comfortable state of humanity. We need to see it to the end to walk upright again.
Why Absurd Now?
Absurdism was always a recipe for mental survival, we need it more than ever.
If Camus says to examine closely the odd vegetation of waterless deserts, I think we need to take it home and cultivate it.
The reactionaries and nihilists of this world have become far more adept at embracing its nonsensicalness than us who want to make meaning of it. That’s an embarrassing state of affairs.
Who is this for?!
Theatre which is exclusive is missing the point.
What is a Zoo?
A zoo is violence in a controlled environment, as long as the walls hold up.
What is a Sculpture?
A sculpture is an image that only ever so slightly moves.
Listing
Crawl (Jaggy Bunnet & Heads on Crooked)
Pianodrome Bruntsfield St. Oswald’s Centre, 41 Montpellier Park, Bruntsfield, EH10 4NB.
Mon 29/Tue 30 June 2026
Evenings: 7pm.
Brandt and Temple are putting up a chandelier. A party has formed in the other room. An acquaintance, a very Private Man, drifts between them, showing off his privateness. They need to connect the chandelier to the current. They abstract it instead. Till Schindler’s wryly funny, linguistically brilliant and visually striking riddle on what it is to inherit a nonsensical world — and the desire to not switch the big light on. Book here.
ENDS
