etb English
Theatre
Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Life as immigrants in Germany – setting off into alleged freedom, intellectual, political or financial, leads a man and a woman into somebody’s basement. One, seemingly a migrant worker, and the other, who at first glance appears to be an intellectual, are left to sink or swim in this barren environment. The reference to theater of the absurd is clear. Up to this point, Threepenny Theatre follows the dramatic source material of Sławomir Mrożek.

Then the text intertwines with the lives of the performers, is deconstructed through a Babylonian confusion of languages and the boundaries between intimate reality and performance blur. After all, Babylon is the everyday life of the performers: Marija Maki Lipkovski is Serbian and Miklós Miki Barna is Hungarian – they live together in Germany and speak Hungarian and Serbian, usually English and German with each other, and sometimes Italian, too. The fact that misunderstandings are just a regular part of the daily routine becomes the means to cryptic humor on stage.

Through a dizzying combination of mask theater, political and intellectual digressions and self-made films, these emigrants search on stage for the freedom they came here for in the first place. In doing so, they explore especially elaborate relationships between theater and film.

This results in grotesque hybrids: 1/3 human being, 1/3 stage character, 1/3 film character. It increasingly seems as though they are a chasing a ghost that is not to be found on any of the three levels, leaving them prisoners of a grand idea.

Watch the trailer here:

Featuring a post-performance discussion on October 2 as part of Theater Scoutings Berlin!