Stopover

It is 1951. A Scandinavian Airlines flight from Calcutta to Rome has a regular stopover in Tel Aviv – and among the passengers this time is Hjalmar Schacht, former president of the Reichsbank, a man nicknamed "Hitler's banker". Schacht would prefer to be anywhere else in the world. An hour's wait in the airport café transforms into a gripping drama about his life: he is recognized by David, a waiter who as a Jew spent years in concentration camps, and by Friederike Brecher, a Jewish woman from Prostějov – and both want to hand Schacht over to Israeli authorities. Schacht defends himself, claiming he tried to moderate Hitler's policies and that he held no office after 1939.

"Stopover" is a play about guilt, forgiveness, justice, and how we confront our own traumas. Every word may decide whether Friederike and David let Schacht fly on, or send him to a Tel Aviv cell.

The play is by Pavel Molek – a radio dramatist and judge of the Supreme Administrative Court, a beloved teacher at the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University, and author of numerous scholarly monographs. His production "Monument for Hradiště", set after the Munich Agreement, was nominated for the Mark Ravenhill Prize.

The production is created in co-production by the Meeting Brno association and Divadlo Radost, in collaboration with the Brno City Museum and Arnoldova vila.