Unusual stage fright?

In early June it finally happened: after particularly in the final phase of intensive, daily rehearsals we, the literature course of the "Gymnasium an der Gartenstraße", performed the play "Cold Peace" by Christoph Keller. A few minutes before the curtain should be opened to our first-night audience, behind the scenes there were biggest excitement and nervousness; everyone who stood around just was embraced again, good success was desired for anyone and at the last minute in the darkness of the stage nearly everybody was shure to have completely forgotten the whole text.
But then, when the light came on, they felt the approximately 100 people in the audience, we all slipped back naturally in our roles and played without significant slip of the tongue or weaknesses. Our piece, a tragic-comedy of the young Swiss C. Keller, we had selected precisely because of its wittiness, the grotesque, where you never know for sure whether one laugh or cry.

In the tradition of Dürrenmatt and the drama "The Physicist" very similar plays "cold peace" in an institution that is run by a power-hungry woman. People here are conditioned by the Pavlovian principle, trained to fully functional robot man (the Reto) or formed at a higher level to dictators and bishops. The central theme is like Dürrenmatt power, a global control apparatus is the goal of Petra Paffloh, for this purpose, she leads a board of doctors in the Castle Institute in godforsaken Altmarschingen.

In this world center of power, shielded from the outside,  now get the very beginning of two innocent comedy "ordinary people": Anselm, a coward, and Erika, the kleptomaniac. Immediately they also may be integrated into the system, they at least initially meet with refreshing humor. Erika is a victim devised by Dr. Herbert intrigue, she resists vehemently against his advances (perhaps remembers some smirking at the "bed scene") and also against any conditioning. But Anselm is increasingly receptive to the training, and as Erika in her confusion finally Brauer, the right hand of Professor Paffloh, confuses with Professor Paffloh  and fires a fatal shot on her, just as Herbert had told her, Anselm turns out to be cool, "dehumanized "Dr. Stefani, who drilled and conditioned has no pity with Erika. The performance ends with Anselm succumbing also the power-madness, after sparkling performances of Reto's who in spite of all conditioning receive independent characters, and the appearance of three award presenters who want to honorthe professor, two of which attracted attention because of their clumsiness, one however, the mayor of the city, amused by his sharp satirical campaign speech.
In our interpretation of the tragicomedy we left little sensitive issues untouched; so we had fun to show the audience the intimate relationship between two female doctors. At the the premiere we at first had a lack of looseness, but the situation changed abruptly even in the second of the three performances, in which so many actors were passed through a prop breakdown in excellent spontaneous improvisation (although the audience did not notice that, the participantshowever had  a lot of fun).
The euphoria and joy of our joint success was great at the closing ceremony, not at least with Mrs. Baumgard, under whose direction and responsibility we had rehearsed the piece. As the last performance was over, the whole tension of the previous days was dissolved in pleasure, and it remained satisfaction about what we had achieved together, and the positive response of our audience (some came several times). A big thank you again to all who sacrificed their precious free time for us.
Your woman doctor Moser aka Karoline Dürselen!