Theatre | The 10 Selected Productions
By Yael Ronen & ensemble
Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin
World premiere Maxim Gorki Theater: 4 September 2015
The Situation. v.l.: Dimitrij Schaad, Maryam Abu Khaled © Ute Langkafel MAIFOTO
“The Situation” is what both Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East call their decade-long irreconcilability. Now they encounter each other in Berlin: the Palestinian man with an Israeli passport, the Israeli actress, the Palestinian parkour athlete, the Syrian film-maker, the black Palestinian woman. In a German language course, teacher Stefan asks them to answer educationally worthy questions (Who are you?) in correct German. In vain, of course. Yael Ronen’s energetic performers and their semi-biographical stories are anything but projection surfaces asking for anyone’s pity. This multi-language German lesson is a piece of radically funny political cabaret of self-assertion. Yael Ronen’s patchwork of diversity causes all our fixed images of migration and integration to crumble. Each one of them an individual, at the end they affirm their hope for the impossibility that sometimes happens regardless: to understand each other. To arrive.
Directed by Yael Ronen
Stage design Tal Shacham
Costume design Amit Epstein
Music Yaniv Fridel, Ofer Shabi
Lighting design Jens Krüger
Dramaturgy Irina Szodruch
Hamoudi Ayham Majid Agha
Karim Karim Daoud
Laila Maryam Abu Khaled
Noa Orit Nahmias
Stefan Dimitrij Schaad
Amir Yousef Sweid