Guten Morgen, Zukunft

Musa Kohlschmidt, Lea Knippenberg, and Julius E. Böhm began their work at the Theaterhaus with the intention of researching the floor beneath the boards. East Germany. What are the remnants of the past, how do they influence the present, and what future do they point to? As a starting point for exploring these questions, the directing team chooses the book Guten Morgen, du Schöne by Maxie Wander. The Austrian author, who moved to the GDR with her husband in 1958, published Protokolle nach Tonband in 1977, in which women of different ages and social backgrounds share their experiences, desires, and daily routines in the socialist system. The book became an instant success – both in the GDR and in the FRG.

Nearly fifty years later, the directing team sets out to create new protocols. Their search also places women at the center. Their perspective forms within the tension between the public and the private. While Germany is now reunified, what remains from the division in their socialization? Through calls, acquaintances, and networks from various institutions, the team finds sixteen female dialogue partners of different generations in and around Jena, who trace their stories through objects and places. From this material, the stage, costumes, and texts for this play are developed.

The collection of questions and life paths condenses into three characters: Rike, Zaia, and Hannah. Portrayed by three actresses from the Theaterhaus, they step onto the stage. They transform the initially empty playing field and invite the audience into their respective private spaces. There, they encounter their symbolic mothers, who speak to them in the voices of Maxie Wander's protocols. The ‘daughters’ meet one another. They compare their experiences, memories, prejudices, and concerns. They reflect on themselves and their heritage. They mourn the past. They free themselves from it.

»Guten Morgen, Zukunft« is about the hidden task in all legacies, about the palpable longing to be part of a story that continues to be told. The actresses take the audience on a journey through these stories. On their crooked and winding paths, there are anecdotes, familiar things, the recognizable, as well as the new. They are tested on the marks of the past and questioned about traces of ideas and dreams.

The floor, which was once supposed to be the foundation of "blooming landscapes," remains silent. The rift through history, the experience of a vanished state, runs through the bodies of women, families, and generations. On this shared ground, beneath it, around it, invisible stories lie dormant. Their retelling brings them to the surface; in this process, the private objects, in which time is knotted, come to life. And in this process, the possibility of change is given, a longing for the future.

Age recommendation: 15+
World premiere: 30.01.2025

A production from the »Open Call 2023/24« program.