Schwarze Schwäne - von Christina Kettering in Monschau

Schwarze Schwäne - von Christina Kettering is performed on Saturday 14 November 2026 at 20:00 at St. Michael-Gymnasium, Walter-Scheibler-Straße 51, 52156 Monschau. Tickets start at 23,00 €, and a discount is available. The organiser is Grenzlandtheater Aachen, Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz 5-6, 52062 Aachen, Deutschland.

The play centres on two sisters deciding whether to put their mother, who needs care, into a home. The older sister is unsure, while the younger wants to take the old woman in and look after her. It soon becomes clear that she is overwhelmed by her two children, the household and the care that now falls to her, and the mother does not make her life easy.

To help her sister, the older one buys "Rosie" - a humanoid care robot to be programmed for the mother. After initial difficulties, the younger sister's problems seem solved: she has more time, the mother is satisfied, and the constant overwhelm ends. But gradually Rosie, with her perfected routines, takes up more and more room in family life, and her artificial intelligence sets the pace.

The central question Christina Kettering develops from an everyday situation many can relate to is whether artificial intelligence helps us or will one day be able to rule us. The title "Schwarze Schwäne" plays on a metaphor common in philosophy for things one cannot imagine that suddenly occur and become reality.