Theatre | The 10 Selected Productions

Common Ground

By Yael Ronen and ensemble

Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin

Premiere 14 March 2014

Common Ground

Common Ground. Orit Nahmias, Vernesa Berbo, Dejan Bućin, Jasmina Musić, Aleksandar Radenković, Mateja Meded, Niels Bormann © Thomas Aurin

On 7 May, following the performance
concert “Balkan Soul” and DJ Zigan Aldi

Public discussion on 8 May, following the performance

For her research project “Common Ground“, Yael Ronen once again works with her cast’s biographies. They are playing their own family stories, dealing with the Yugoslav War and their lives as actors in Berlin today and as children in the early 1990s – children of perpetrators and of victims alike. Like Jasmina Musić and Mateja Meded: The father of one of them died in a camp where the father of the other was a guard. Together with Yael Ronen, an Israeli living in Berlin, they took a journey to the “Common Ground”, their old home, Bosnia. They are accompanied by a German and an Israeli, whose clueless outsider’s perspective provides both distance and comic relief to this fierce, searching investigation of history, of oneself and the others. It is an evening of great emotional power, addressing the task of reconciliation and acceptance without raised forefingers, polemics or truisms – and with no fear of big emotions and huge giggles.

www.gorki.de

Directed by Yael Ronen
Stage design Magda Willi
Costume design Lina Jakelski
Music Nils Ostendorf
Video Benjamin Krieg, Hanna Slak
Dramaturgy Irina Szodruch

With
Vernesa Berbo
Niels Bormann
Dejan Bućin
Mateja Meded
Jasmina Musić
Orit Nahmias
Aleksandar Radenković

A Maxim Gorki Theater production, funded by the Capital Cultural Fund.