Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm

“Things can’t go on this way!” These are the words with which this empowering drama begins, where three performers use personal anecdotes and historic documents to tell us about their political activism.

The performance alternates between collective sequences by the three performers and solo scenes in which they tell us about their motivations and experiences in a number of protest movements. Though all three of them grew up in Germany, their lives differ in many respects: one performer who grew up in Offenbach and was active in the environmental movement describes demonstrations against the Western runway and extension of the airport in the 1970s; from another, we hear stories of growing up in the GDR, eating West German corn flakes on holiday and of the demonstrations in 1989; while the third tells us about protests against the Vietnam War and running away from his village to West Berlin in order to avoid military service.

This play is not only an implicit appeal for greater political engagement in favour of a more just world, but its individual experiences of the past also make it a sympathetic history lesson about Germany’s protest and resistance movements: what will you protest for or against? How should we go on?