Fathers shape our lives – but what remains of them? Twice a month we survey celebrities about their relationship with their father. This time: the cabaret artist Lara Stoll.
The slam poet Lara Stoll and her father Hansruedi.
1. Describe three characteristics of your father.
Compact, conscientious, enterprising.
2. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: What are typical characteristics that characterize you as your father’s daughter?
I share the three character traits, but also have a remarkable talent for maneuvering myself into dubious situations. That’s a good thing. For me as an author, wading in the faux pas is an essential part of my work.
3. Complete the following sentence: Unlike my mother, my father was . . .
. . . always moustache.
4. What did your father teach you about life?
tenacity and modesty.
5. . . . about love?
There is an unspoken understanding between my father and I. What he thinks about love is somewhere in my DNA. We prefer to talk about tennis and my mother’s tomato harvest instead.
6. . . . about money?
We only talk about that at the annual Monopoly at Christmas, when he – or I – accidentally buys the electricity company again, although that really doesn’t do that much good.
Lara Stoll with her brother Denis and her grandfather around 1991: “Since my father was always the one who took photos of us, he himself is practically not on any of them.”
About Lara Stoll and her father:
Lara Stoll is a Swiss cabaret artist, actress and author. She was born in Schaffhausen in 1987 and grew up in Thurgau. After the teacher training college, she studied film at the Zurich University of the Arts and has been producing films since 2013. She appeared as a slam poet for the first time in 2005 and became both Swiss and European champions in 2010. In 2019 she was also awarded the German cabaret prize and in 2021 the Salzburg bull.
As an actress, Lara Stoll appeared in the SRF crime series “Advent, Advent” in 2020. She is also the singer of the synth-pop band Stefanie Stauffacher. Today she lives in Zurich.
Her father, Hansruedi Stoll (* 1954), is a trained machine mechanic. Today he is retired.
7. Tell about your most formative experience with your father.
My father built my brother and I a tree house. It was somehow magical and also opened a lot of doors in our little heads, because suddenly so many ideas and stories about the tree house sprouted up. I thank him for that.
All the sprained ankles because of the “Schwingi”, which we had of course installed at breakneck speed underneath, weren’t really necessary.
8. What do you want to do differently than your father?
If I look at him like that, then I should do it as exactly as he does. He’s 67 and massively fitter than me. I can cut myself a whole Black Forest cake from his sporting ambition.
9. What always annoyed you about your father, but now you do the same thing?
Watch the Super League.
10. A phrase your father often said to you?
“Have you already installed the winter pnöö?”
11. What did you always want to say to your father?
Thank you for the uncomplicated father-daughter relationship. And thank you for always picking me up after I’ve floated down the Rhine in the dinghy.