A glimpse at what’s on offer at this year’s ATT makes you appreciate how the Deutsches Theater has been managing to put on its showcase of contemporary playwright-driven drama for 30 years now. There’s no end of dramaturgical delights in store.
Back for its second edition under intendant Iris Laufenberg, it’s taking as its theme “not belonging” – a useful framework, as it allows for a real diversity of pieces to take the stage. The centrepiece, Long Night of the Playwrights, features new work from writers-in-residence Guido Wertheimer, Josephine Witt and Miku Sophie Kühmel, and a writing collective from the inclusive RambaZamba Theatre.
Wertheimer offers a fantastical flight from the apocalypse in Nach dem Hass (“after hate”). Witt’s dtschlnd, deine jahreszeiten (“germany, your seasons”) is both mother-daughter road trip and an attempt at theorising a “German” mode of perceiving the year. Kühmel’s FELLWECHSEL is a queer coming-of-age adventure in Iceland’s storied wilderness. And RambaZamba thematises the search for voices outside of the norm.
Among the host of fascinating guest shows from Potsdam, Zurich and beyond, I’d suggest especially looking out for Ajax und der Schwan der Scham (“Ajax and the swan of shame”) from Berlin Theaterpreis winner Christopher Rüping, who uses Sophocles’ tragedy to meditate on male fragility, and Dea Loher’s Frau Yamamoto ist noch da (“Ms Yamamoto is still here”). Directed by Jette Steckel, the play dramatises a couple’s failing relationship by tracing how their eponymous neighbor, now dead, lives on in this couple’s shared, but fracturing, memory. NB: these plays have English surtitles.
- Autor:innenTheaterTage, Deutsches Theater, Schumannstr. 13A, Mitte, Jun 11-21, details.
