How to win friends & influence people

A mass
Theater Freiburg
2013

““How to Win Friends & Influence People,” the title of a classic American motivational book from 1936, served as inspiration for Nikitin's sermon, which is clearly not a sermon, but whose presentation, with its emotional impact, strung together with logical conclusions and driven by our desires and needs, to consider whether we might not find answers here to our diverse, open questions about life. Whether we should believe—in this Mephistophelean actor-preacher or even in God. The fact that Nikitin's staging techniques are transparent at all times and that a discrepancy opens up within us between our understanding of the techniques and their emotional impact gives the performance its relentless pull.”
— Nachtkritik

“And so this clever evening shatters the expectations it raised with Breitenbach's monologue about Doubting Thomas in a multifaceted, contradictory flicker of irony, refusing to let any truth simply be true. We will obviously have to live with that.”
— Basler Zeitung

“For the most part, it's damn well done, essentially a state-of-the-art parody of Dale Carnegie's self-help classic ‘How to Win Friends & Influence People’, (...) a coherent, highly complex and artificial Gesamtkunstwerk with a philosophical superstructure.”
— Tagesanzeiger

“It is precisely this apparent superiority of the audience that Boris Nikitin's performance exploits. For although everyone seems to be waiting intently for the impending brainwashing, you only notice it when it has already become exaggerated and ironic. That is what makes this monologue so perfidious and clever. ”
— Stuttgarter Zeitung

Events

- 16 June 2017
- - Martin Luther Propagandasymposium / City Church of Jena
- 23 June 2016
- - Theater Rampe Stuttgart / St. Maria Church
- 21 June 2016
- - Theater Rampe Stuttgart / St. Maria Church
- 16 June 2016
- - Theater Rampe Stuttgart / St. Maria Church
- 14 June 2016
- - Theater Rampe Stuttgart / St. Maria Church
- 22 + 23 March 2014
- - Kaserne Basel / Basilica Kloster Mariastein
- 20 March 2014
- - Kaserne Basel / Basilica Kloster Mariastein
- 15 + 16 February 2013
- - Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der letzten Tage / Theater Freiburg
- 8 February 2013
- - Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der letzten Tage/Theater Freiburg
  - first try out