Friendship Never Ends

“Yah got to have friends,” sings Bette Midler in the face of the AIDS pandemic, while those affected become aware of the vital importance of networks of friendship for survival. Decades later, hashtagmonike (Mona Vojacek Koper, Henrike Commichau) and Lorenz Nolting in Jena confront the value of friendship in the context of a pandemic response that barely acknowledges friendship as a category at all. Friendship has always been one of the most important social means of cohesion, and yet it remains a free bird—untamed and without a legal framework. While the RZB (the romantic dyadic relationship) is based on relations of possession and is promisingly embellished with the idea of romance, friendship is grounded in voluntariness, in a constant negotiation of the relationship—one that society recognizes only as informal. It is time to erect a monument to this free structure.

Friendship Never Ends spans a broad arc of experiences, offering insights into the many forms friendships take, into moments of greatest solidarity and deepest disappointment, into cliques and the history of friendship that has brought us to the year 2021. With warmth, humor, and music, Henrike, Mona, and Lorenz take us on a wild journey: ’Cause that’s what friends are for.

Premiere: June 25, 2021
Running time: 1h 15 min

Invited to the ZwischenStücke of the Mülheimer Theatertage 2023