Outrageous truths: "In the Name of" at the Munich Kammerspiele

Created: 04/01/2022, 14:54

By: Teresa Grenzmann

“In the Name of” (here Lisa Marie Stojčev) is artistically appealing, explosive in content, bitterly ironic, but never moralizing.

© Armin Smailovic/Münchner Kammerspiele

At least one million children were forcibly adopted in the 1860s to 1970s.

Liat Fassberg's "In the Name of" deals with the pain of relatives, the subterfuges of thieves and the human right to know about one's own biography.

Kidnapped, stolen, kidnapped.

In five languages, these words belong in the vocabulary of the 1860s to 1970s and were not pronounced at the time.

We are talking about at least one million children who have been forcibly adopted: who have never seen their homeland again;

who never met their biological mothers;

who, given away or enslaved, have been unlawfully taken from their natural environment by a state system in the name of ... well, what?

The Law?

Of truth, majority, justice, humanity?

Hardly likely.

"In the Name of" brings outrageous truths to light

"In the Name of": For this documentary, Liat Fassberg (born in 1985 in Jerusalem) was awarded the Munich Advancement Prize for German-language Drama in 2021 as part of "Neue Zeit, Neue Dramatik".

Now, with Fassberg, the audience looks to England and the USA, to Belgium and the GDR, to Spain, Australia, Israel and Canada.

And he catches his breath at the outrageous truths that are being unrolled between skin-colored cloth and gray felt.

In Leonard Mandl's stage design, wordplay seems simply translated directly into images: the past, swallowed up by the abyss of oblivion, on a patchwork quilt of scraps of memory.

On DIN A3 paper, Fassberg assembled snippets of history and memories into a theatrical text collage full of commentary references – narrative material which, unfinished, calls for discussion.

The character of the 90-minute premiere in the Werkraum der Kammerspiele reflects the secrecy of a scandalous topic and its incomplete documentation - artistically appealing, explosive in content, bitterly ironic, but never sentimental or moralizing.

"In the Name of" at the Munich Kammerspiele © Armin Smailovic/Agentur Focus/Münchner Kammerspiele

The staging begins in the foyer

The staging by Joël-Conrad Hieronymus succeeds, adequate to Fassberg's experimental poetry, in the exciting concentrate of polyphony.

This already begins in the foyer of the workroom when a red thread is woven through the figure of a grieving mother who, madly, is looking for her baby, which was taken away for the alleged vaccination, stolen, given away, but declared dead to her.

It continues with the exact, effective use of reduced means, such as the celebration of voice and speech rhythms for Max Mahlert's composition as an expression of feeling and attitude.

Lisa Marie Stojčev, Bernardo Arias Porras, Svetlana Belesova, Edmund Telgenkämper and, from the Otto Falckenberg School, Isabell Antonia Höckel and Anton Nürnberg, illuminate the unbelievable from many perspectives: the pain of those affected and their families, the cowardice and subterfuges of the thieves, but above all the right of man to know about his own biography.

Also at the Munich Kammerspiele: "Pigs" - is not just about pigs, but asks how we want to live in the future.

Our premiere review.