Berlin, 1961

 

Stage direction: Kjell Moberg (and Alex Byrne)

Stage Design: Julia Schiller

Music: David Pagan

Dramaturgy: Christian Schönfelder

Theatrical pedagogy: Peter Galka

 

With: Aude Henrye, Sarah-Ann Kempin, Elisabet Topp; Tomas Mechacek, Alexander Redwitz, Gerd Ritter

 

From 14 years +

Premiere: 6th of June 2009

Co-Production with New International Encounter (NIE)

 

In german with subtitles

 

August 13th in the year of 1961: day-to-day the government of the GDR shuts down the border, which to this date was more or less a permeable line. At first it is only barbed wire, a little bit later a veritable wall which separates families, lovers and friends and presents them with unknown conflicts and decisions which forces many a desperate to unheard acts of hopelessness.

Like a burning glass the “Bernauer Straße” focuses the fate of the city of Berlin and its inhabitants. The border runs exactly in the middle of this street and on its east side house walls suddenly become part of the new border wall: parents throw their children from the third floor of these houses into the western part of the city; an old woman, hanging out of one of these windows, is restrained by GDR-soldiers on the one side and at the same time drawn down by passers-by to West-Berlin; in what seems to be a last-minute chance, a GDR-soldier in uniform jumps over the barbed wire into the West, his rifle still in his hand. It is also in the “Bernauer Straße” where in the weeks to follow several people begin to dig tunnels – for themselves or in order to help friends and family members to escape unseen into the western part of Berlin.

 

The directors Alex Byrne and Kjell Moberg take these events at the “Bernauer Straße” as a starting point for a theatrical journey into recent German history, played by an international ensemble with actors of JES and New International Encounter (NIE).

NIE is well known for its vivid, innovative handling of historical narratives and biographies, combined with a musical, very physical approach and playful enactment on stage.

 

The multinational ensemble of NIE was guest at the fifth issue of the festival “Bright view” 2006, where they performed their renowned trilogy of  20th century European history (“My Long Journey Home” / “Past Half Remembered” / “End of Everything Ever”) in Stuttgart.

 

 

 

Press quotations

 

 

JES shows a lot of touching performances. But infrequently one got under the skin like this performative examination with systems of injustice such as the ancient DDR with its brutal intervention into people’s life.

With a keen sense the Norwegian director Kjell Moberg and the actors of JES and the New International Encounter discover with a mixture of tender humour and excessive slapstick the tragedy of people, whose right of self-determination is caged behind a wall.

With their strong performative presence and their brilliant live-performed songs the six  actors create the imagination of a system of oppression, that penetrates to the last corner of private life and paralyses the daily life.

The main requisite of the evening is a Trabi. It is used as a car, but most of the time it acts as the door of flat. In front of it is lying a carpet, there are standing several pieces of camping furniture, which are illustrating the Schmitts’ flat. By enjoying the crazy playing the Trabi is used, Hannah’s room is on the top of the Trabi, later on she is locked in the luggage trunk, which forms now the cell of the prison. In that way „Berlin, 1961“ tells not only one single history, but tells about the ludicrous possibilities, which are hidden in the objects, in the instruments and in the actors.

Stuttgarter Nachrichten

 

 

 

A wonderfully well-done production in the way you only experience it infrequently:

A self-designed play, which tells the big world history by showing the live of litte, nearly common people.

A production developed by the company on ist own, which deals ingeniously and inventively with the resources of theater, which uses the multifaceted possibilities of the actors, which is amusing without being only a short-lived entertainmaint an without being mainstream.

Sarah-Ann Kempin as Hannah and Gerd Ritter as her father are the two central characters of the evening, und both suceed in being extremely present and refreshingly agile. And while doing this, they manage to hint emotions and abysms silently.

With „Berlin, 1961“ JES proves not only that theater can put across policy and history to the audience, but also that theater is an enormously catching issue, if you know how to use its possibilities. By the way, the play is made for an audience older than 13, with absolutely means, that the audience can be much older.

Stuttgarter Zeitung

 

 

It sounds constructed but is more effective than a permanent listening to the radio. Gerd Ritter surrounds Hermann with an aura of hopeless rigidity – the Job from the Bernauer Straße. The last and only he takes comfort from is the polishing of the actually most important protagonist of the play: the Trabi. Light blue like the summersky up above Berlin he plays the brilliant multifunctional role: childrens’ room, living room, the wall, a watchtower, the cell were people get tortured and the wicked café of the Volkssolisarität. The Trabi goes in circles in a wild way. It dances over the stage heayily but also airy, like the emotions of a German girl in the summer of 1961.

Nachtkritik.de