Tragödienbastard: Wo spielt das Gegenwartstheater?

ATTENTION: Unfortunately, the event has to be cancelled!

Stage reading and talk with Ewe Benbenek and Katrin Trüstedt

In a stage reading with two actors, Ewe Benbenek, who was awarded the Mülheimer Dramatikpreis in 2021, presents excerpts from her theater text Tragödienbastard which also works in reading. The reading will be followed by a talk with Katrin Trüstedt on the complex relationship between text and theatrical realization as well as on dealing with sexism, racism, and classicism.

Benbenek’s play is less about staging roles and more about staging narratives—the narrative of the migrant child, the workers’ child, the emancipation as a woman—that are repeatedly interrupted, subverted, and started anew. Benbenek builds on the genres of the Greek tragedy and autofiction while also giving them a virtuosic twist. This results in a spectacular (theater) play that, beyond anything that can and cannot be said, insists on language and the instinct to play.

The play repeatedly deals with its own production and thereby raises the question of private and public spaces of post-digital writing, enactment, and reflection. On the one hand, the event asks for the varieties and scope of contemporary literature when it comes to the (non)belonging of characters and texts in national and geographical spaces (Poland and Germany; East and West). On the other hand, it asks for the scope of literature and the arts themselves: does a play take place on stage, in the act of reading, or via livestream in a living room?

With kind permission by Fischer.Theater.Medien.

Admission free.

The event is part of the series Spielräume der Gegenwartsliteratur organized by the research project Neighborhood in Contemporary Berlin Literature at the ZfL, which is held between April and June in cooperation with various partners in Berlin.