Munich Kammerspiele: Katharina Bach on "Nora & The Freedom of a Woman"
Created: 06/10/2022 09:24
By: Ulrike Frick
Katharina Bach plays the leading role in "Nora & The Freedom of a Woman" at the Munich Kammerspiele.
© Astrid Schmidhuber/Münchner Merkur
The Munich Kammerspiele open the 22/23 season in the theater with "Nora & The Freedom of a Woman".
Katharina Bach can be seen in the title role.
Katharina Bach came to Munich together with the new director Barbara Mundel.
That was in autumn 2020. Hopes and plans were high - and then a second lockdown destroyed a lot of them for the time being.
The 37-year-old, who previously worked at the Frankfurt Schauspiel for eight years, was immediately noticed.
From the first live stream premiere of “Ghosts – Erika, Klaus and the Magician” you couldn’t take your eyes off this woman in the glass case, who was literally vibrating with intensity.
This was followed by "Die Politicians", "Effingers", "Heldenplatz" or the "Bavarian Suffragettes", "Horror and other things" in the workroom and the Nick Cave song recital with her band Bitchboy: When Katharina Bach enters the stage, you have to just look.
From Friday, October 7, 2022, she can be seen as the title heroine in "Nora & The Freedom of a Woman".
The evening is announced as a "Double Feature". There is a variation on Ibsen's Nora, as well as A Woman's Freedom, a novel by Édouard Louis adapted for the stage. Are the texts intertwined?
Katharina Bach:
No, it's practically two evenings in a row.
If you look at both, however, exciting content-related connections can emerge.
Because the fictional story, which was written 140 years ago, reveals surprising points of contact with a woman's life that took place 30 to 40 years ago and has now been described by a very young author.
What's happening on stage?
Katharina Bach:
The stage design plays a big role for us.
As a result, the patriarchal structures quickly become clear.
A system of oppression was and always is the house.
And that's what we're doing on stage.
Females were domesticated by males, were deliberately kept at home, and were not supposed to appear alone in public.
So director Felicitas Brucker stages historically?
Katharina Bach:
We don't place our production clearly in the 19th century.
Rather, we asked ourselves which aspects of Ibsen's play still interest us today.
Those were definitely the relationships.
That's why we've also invited three young women writers to take a fresh look at the text.
So this time, Ibsen's image of women comes across as completely emancipated?
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Katharina Bach:
A lot of this supposedly old stuff is still in today's relationships.
It is a fallacy if we believe that these patriarchal structures have been overcome.
At the latest after the birth of the first child, the roles are redistributed, no matter how equal a couple previously lived.
Katharina Bach:
Mostly yes.
A lot has happened, but we can also see how far we still have to go.
And in view of the current elections in Italy, one also has to recognize how fragile these achievements are.
For the white, successful woman, maybe feminism works.
But what about all marginalized groups?
Can couples even be equal when capitalism presses on the relationship all the time?
They really wanted to work under female leadership. What is the difference in daily operations?
Katharina Bach:
It's not possible to say that in general terms.
But I don't have to fight for some things here in an equal ensemble, and I don't even have to address others anymore.
In a society dominated by men, as it used to be in the theatre, it is much more difficult for women to develop.
Whether as a director who was not allowed on the big stage, or as an actress in a largely male-dominated canon of plays.
Right now everyone is ringing and the structures are being changed.
But we haven't completely freed ourselves yet.
