Mr. Berni has been living in the senior citizens’ home »Immergrün« (»Evergreen«) for a short time. He had never wanted to be there. Mr. Berni hates green. And he hates his housemates – the fat female athlete, Mr. Diletti who suffers from dementia, and the dolled-up opera diva. And he hates the home’s staff. At some point he has a horrible suspicion: do they want to kill him and the other wealthy senior citizens? The residents had better be careful – and someone has to develop a plan for a counterattack.

»Schlag sie tot« (»Beat them to death«), created in 2008, was Nikolaus Habjan’s first piece. The inventive clacking-mouth puppets join with Georg Kreisler’s bitter and mean songs; Kreisler is known for his profoundly black humor. Born in Vienna in 1922, he emigrated to the USA in 1938 because of his Jewish background, lived in Europe again from 1955 and died in Salzburg in 2011. The piece, in which daily politics are constantly integrated, has changed repeatedly over the course of time. The evening combines cynicism with the loving insight into senior citizens’ lives.

Simon Meusburger, born in Bregenz in 1974, studied journalism and theatre studies. After working as an assistant director, he debuted as a director in 2006 and founded the Schubert Theater in Vienna in 2007, which he has been directing to the present day. He created numerous pieces in cooperation with Nikolaus Habjan, among them »Der Herr Karl« by Carl Merz & Helmut Qualtinger, »Becoming Peter Pan – an epilogue to Michael Jackson« (both 2010) and »F. Zawrel – erbbiologisch und sozial minderwertig« (»F. Zawrel – genetically and socially inferior«, 2012). He also directed »Alice« based on »Alice in wonderland« by Lewis Carroll (2014) and »Paperman« (2016).