Die Vaterlosen

There is a party at Anna Petrovna’s country estate and the guests are revelling as if there were no social decline or loss of status, money and reputation. Among the party guests is Platonov, the village schoolmaster who arouses strong feelings in three women at once and causes more than one disaster. In their interpretation of Anton Chekhov’s early work from 1880, director Jette Steckel and her enthusiastic cast, with Wiebke Puls, Katharina Bach and Joachim Meyerhoff leading the way, expertly display a society that tries to close its eyes to its own demise. The production integrates a wide range of formats and topics, including a talk show by and with Berliner Volksbühne’s former chief dramaturg Carl Hegemann and varying guests, where members of generation 70+ volubly exchange their views of the world.

Statement of the Jury

There is no fourth wall in the beginning. The Kammerspiele-cast around Wiebke Puls as Anna Petrovna, impoverished widow of a general, casually chat into the stalls, heave beer crates across the ramp and try to get into the party spirit. But there is no buzz, no matter how much the “fatherless” try. This is Anton Chekhov’s first play, written when he was still at school in the Russian provinces, while his bankrupt father had fled to Moscow to avoid his creditors. Jette Steckel stages it as a dance on the volcano’s edge. One after the other, strong women succumb to Joachim Meyerhoff’s toxic school teacher Platonov, throwing themselves at him in a craving for perdition and defiantly declaring him to be their “utopia”. One, at any rate, successfully sues him in a text insert by Katja Brunner – and Platonov promptly declares himself the victim. And then there are the “DAD MEN TALKING”, older gentlemen (and ladies) whom dramaturg Carl Hegemann interviews on the generational experience of fatherlessness in talk show parentheses, until Platonov knocks the stuffing out of them. A celebration of acting, full of collective repressions and projections!

Tojuror Martin Thomas Pesl's video statement in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library (in German)

Digital programme booklet on the websiteof “Die Vaterlosen”