89/90

The title of Peter Richter’s autobiographical novel “89/90” refers to the period of Germany’s reunification. Dealing with this great era of upheaval, it is told from the pop-literary point of view of a 16 year-old youth from Dresden, caught between high-spirited anarchy before and humiliating shopping binges after the fall of the wall. Director Claudia Bauer reverses these personal memories into their opposite and stages a reunification-oratorio, in which the subjective voice of the narrator repeatedly descends from the radio station of memories, joining the collective on stage and disappearing in it: In an ensemble of pudgy Pinocchio-puppets, in a school class drilled for socialism, in an amateur choir that intonates ironically celebratory songs from the German Democratic Republic, both pro- and anti-regime. At the same time, the production tells the story of a fundamental schism that persists up to our federal German present: At the crossing of right and left, you had a choice between authoritarian nationalism and self-responsible freedom. Bauer translates both choices into image and sound and thus helps to novel to attain a grand form.

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