photo Heiko Schäfer

April 23rd, 2010 – godz. 7.00 p.m. Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin

Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin

DRITTE GENERATION / THIRD GENERATION

by Yael Ronen & the Company

work in progress

In a work in progress Israeli playwright and director Yael Ronen, together with her team and a company of Israeli, German and Palestinian actors analyses the Gordian Knot that characterizes these three nations. The participants come from very different family backgrounds. Some come from families where relatives were born on opposite sides of the divided Germany, or are either Muslim or Christian Palestinians who have Israeli passports and live in Haifa or Tel Aviv, or come from Jewish families with different origins – from Europe, the Middle East or North Africa. As well as discussing the Here and Now, there is a focus on those years that laid down the roots of our ideas about ourselves today. Concepts like memory, guilt, what makes a perpetrator and what makes a victim, and what those concepts mean to us now, both in their public and private use, is being scrutinized. This is not about competing national founding myths, but an attempt to comprehend the foundations upon which our personal identity is based within a particular national context.
The first phase of this work in progress took place in Israel and Germany in June 2008. The results of this were presented at the Festival of World Theatre 2008 in Halle. The second phase was a furtherworking period in Tel Aviv and Berlin, during which a performance piece was developed, based on the findings of the first presentation.

script – Amit Epstein, Irina Szodruch
director – Yael Ronen

performed by: Knut Berger, Niels Bormann, Karsten Dahlem, Ishai Golan, George Iskandar, Orit Nahmias, Rawda, Ayelet Robinson, Judith Strößenreuter, Yusef Sweid

Premiere in Berlin – March 20th, 2009

A co-production by the Schaubühne with the Habima National Theatre of Israel (Tel Aviv) and the Ruhrtriennale 2009, commissioned by Theater der Welt 2008 in Halle, supported by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes and the Goethe Institute.

www.schaubuehne.de