Peter Handke's Kaspar -

: Modern companies like the Aya Theatre Company continue to stage the work as an "intoxicating meditation on identity". Video excerpts of performances, such as those directed by Lola Pierson , highlight its mechanical and artificial movement.

: The Prompters bombard Kaspar with "orderly sentences" to "exorcise" his original, unique sentence. As he learns to speak, he also learns to "order" his world—physically arranging stage props into a socially acceptable room. Peter Handke's Kaspar

The play is loosely based on the real-life figure of , a 16-year-old who appeared in Nuremberg in 1828 possessing only one sentence: "I want to be someone like somebody else was once" . : Modern companies like the Aya Theatre Company

Peter Handke’s (1967) is a seminal work of avant-garde theater that reimagines the historical mystery of Kaspar Hauser as a chilling "model" of how language socializes and eventually destroys an individual. Often called "speech torture" by Handke himself, the play suggests that our very identity is a product of the linguistic systems forced upon us by society. The Central Premise: The Creation of a Citizen As he learns to speak, he also learns