31 January 2011. “Is there an ideal location for a certain play?” wrote "nachtkritik" immediately after the premiere of "Die Kontrakte des Kaufmanns". The business comedy written by the Austrian Nobel Prize Laureate ElfriedeJelinekhas its Swiss premiere in St.Gallen. Tickets for the performance with the subsequent public debate on 11 February 2011 at 7.30 p.m. are available to HSG students at a 50 per cent reduction.

Ethics admission test in the business comedy
In an interlude, two actors-presenters satirise a semi-documentary presentation about a fraudster who embezzled 500 million francs – and had studied at the HSG. The link with the Viennese Meinl Bank and the St.Gallen production imbues the play with local colour. The play avers that the HSG lacks a moral basis: the HSG Ethics Emergency Collection is launched, and money for an ethics admission test is collected with piggy banks. The impulse to discuss this addendum to the play was provided by HSG President Prof. Dr. Thomas Bieger, who will make his first public appearance in his new function – at the St.Gallen Theatre.

Debate about a caricatured HSG image
Prof. Dr. Günter Müller-Stewens will show that the two new business ethics experts are not the only members of the HSG faculty who take up the cudgels for fundamental ethical values in management. The doctoral student Verena Witzigwill put forward the students’ perspective. In the director’s absence, the ideas of the production will be explained by the dramaturg Dr. Karoline Exner. On the part of the cast, the actors Matthias Alboldand Marcus Schäfer will comment on their farce of a dialectical explanation model of Meinl’s wheelings and dealings. The event will be co-hosted by Prof. Dr. Yvette Sánchez as the representative of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the HSG’s public lecture programme, and by Theatre Director Tim Kramer, who is also a lecturer at the HSG.

Picture: "Die Kontrakte des Kaufmanns", St.Gallen Theatre,Tine Edel.