Marburg
Bernard-Marie Koltès is one of the most frequently performed and most influential playwrights of the 1980s. Written in 1986, the text leaves open whether this encounter in the middle of the fields happens by chance or whether this dialogue is deliberately sought out. A customer and a dealer meet. Both circle each other, feeling each other out. A transaction is to take place, but what is to be sold remains unspoken. In any case, the person addressed feels meant. Little by little, it emerges that he too wants something. The dealer and the customer are faced with no “other” choice than “to contend with the violence of the enemy or with the gentleness of brotherhood.” (B.-M. Koltès). The virtuosity of speaking together grows into a meandering flow. This exchange in solitude winds its way up to great universal questions. It oscillates between skill and feeling, sexual play and capitalist, demanding dependency, and at the same time is an intellectual probing of power in confrontation. For everyone aged 15 and over who wants to experience the way people interact with one another, regardless of social systems and state structures, and for lovers of poetic-rhetorical skill.
On the day of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., first assistant of a large bank, is arrested. Neither the crime he is accused of is mentioned, nor is he taken into custody. K. is to continue his profession and shape his daily life as before. Information that could explain this situation, which initially seems like a cruel joke, is denied to him. In search of answers, Josef K. is drawn deeper into the labyrinth of an opaque bureaucracy that acts seemingly arbitrarily and follows its own, incomprehensible rules. Soon, the unknown judicial system dictates his entire life. In the end, the death of Josef K. awaits, without a verdict being passed or his guilt being proven. Franz Kafka's (1883 – 1924) unfinished novel is a surreal nightmare, a crime story, and a linguistically dense work of art that eludes any definitive interpretation and proves to have new urgency in the face of every present moment. At a time when justice and legal systems worldwide are wobbling, being manipulated, and where law and justice are increasingly becoming matters of interpretation by those in power, Kafka's novel appears more relevant than ever. For all people aged 14 and up who want to engage with law and justice and wish to cultivate their critical perspective on our present. In a version by Bettina Rehm and Cornelius Edlefsen.
We are all different, yet we are all good just the way we are. This message is conveyed in the book COMES THE RHINO by Heinz Janisch, in which a large gray rhinoceros wishes to be as light, small, and agile as the bird resting on its back. But neither of them can escape their skin and body, and that's a good thing, because everyone has their own wonderful qualities. The rhinoceros is needed – as a refuge, as a mountain. The bird is needed – as a cheerful companion, as a snowflake. Like every animal, we each have our own unique abilities and characteristics. Are you rather majestic and grand like a lion? Or quick and clever like a tiny mouse? Casual and long like a giraffe? Or quiet and sly like an owl? For all people aged 3 and up who want to discover what animal is within them and how beautiful it is to be different.
The play THE PUBLIC SPACE tells the story of a couple that increasingly loses itself in the tension between reality, appearance, and delusion, as well as virtual and imaginary worlds. A seemingly trivial police case plunges the man into a spiral of distrust, fear, and paranoia. To counteract the feeling of losing control, he equips his apartment with surveillance cameras and security technology. At the same time, he finds himself uncontrollably drawn deeper into an influential circle of power pursuing political interests in his profession. His wife, a sociologist, suddenly deviates from the norm at her workplace and thus loses her balance. In search of a way out, she spends her nights in internet forums, no longer just following strangers online, but also on the street, and increasingly loses herself in the thought worlds of political groups. Although they appear to move in opposite political camps, their paths intersect in a web of surveillance and loss of control. For they have long since become objects of surveillance themselves 2013 in a sinister public space of digital networks, avatars, trolls, hackers, and bots. With THE PUBLIC SPACE, awarded the Hamburg Literature Prize in the category of Poetry/Drama/Experimental in 2019, playwright Ulrike Syha paints a picture of a society marked by polarization, insecurity, and the loss of shared realities. Director Anne Decker sees in the text a mirror of the present, where digital technologies influence political opinion formation, power dynamics, and democratic processes more than ever before. For all people aged 15
One day, real estate agent Eleonore Garazzo realizes that she is actually a cat. This thought—no, this deep feeling of certainty—comes over her when she observes such an animal specimen through her window one day. Financially secure and single, she decides to turn her back on her previous life and from now on be a cat. She has a cat suit tailored for herself and begins to gradually shed her human behavior. The outside world reacts with irritation, while the psychologist Dr. Wildbruch, with whom Eleonore repeatedly discusses her self-chosen transformation, is fascinated. As Eleonore’s senses and thinking become more and more feline, and her life unfolds between grooming her fur, lapping up milk, and hunting other small animals, her perception of the world also increasingly changes. Eleonore is a cat—cat is Eleonore. Eleonore’s withdrawal and transformation into an animal is a radical act of retreat from social coexistence, a rejection of rules and norms, and an individual act of liberation. But what does it mean when a person withdraws from social participation—what is given up, what is gained? And is such a step even conceivable? For everyone aged 14 and up who wants to join Eleonore in searching for what it means to be a cat, and who wants to confront the pressing questions of social coexistence through it.
Who depends on whom? A customer and a dealer meet in the middle of the cotton fields. They circle each other, sizing each other up. A deal is to be made, but neither of them knows what is to be bought or sold. The lonely bargaining on both sides is a balancing act, permeated by double meanings and constantly oscillating between violence and gentleness, brotherhood and competition, seduction and threat. The bargaining recedes into the background, and instead a verbal testing of power emerges. At the center are the desires and fears of the adversaries, and which of the two actually has control. Bernard-Marie Koltès uses the mysterious encounter of strangers as a metaphor for human interaction: a constant weighing of the fear of the unknown against the longing for closeness. The play makes use of the metaphor of the market and the forbidden deal to show how people deal with one another. For everyone aged 15 and up who wants to experience the way people interact with one another, regardless of social systems and state structures, and for lovers of poetic-rhetorical skill.
