Breaking Surf (Brandung)
by Maria Milisavljevic
The winner of this year’s Kleistförderpreis deals with the search for art student Karla. On a Monday evening, she met up with friends before deciding to take a quick trip to the supermarket around the corner. She never returned. Using a skilled sense of narrative, young writer Maria Milisavljevic sends her characters on a breathless search, weaving together an exciting crime story with a tale about friendship and love, home and family and an exploration of pain of loss.
Director Christopher Rüping
Set Jonathan Mertz
Costumes Lene Schwind
Music Christoph Hart
Dramaturgy Meike Schmitz
Berlin-premiere October 10, 2013
A co-production with Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen
A co-production with Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen
Natalia BelitskiI
Benjamin LillieHE
Barbara HeynenSHE
Christoph HartLive-musician
What's on
Dirk and Me (Dirk und ich)
by and with Marcel Kohler
To our regret, the follow-up discussion with Renate Eichenberger has to be cancelled due to illness.
Box
19.30 - 21.00
For the 150th time
Director: Hanna Rudolph
Kammerspiele
19.30 - 20.45
Swabian power and collateral hits
An evening of video snippets for Ulrich Khuon
by Jürgen Kuttner
by Jürgen Kuttner
Deutsches Theater
20.00
In the play itself, however, the glacial chill doesn’t melt – without the author turning this into a moral message. With complete coolness and analytical precision, Milisavljevic tells the story of three twenty-somethings, Me, Her, Him, two of whom have a first name: Martina and Vlado, who are missing a further person. The student Karla was last seen in front of an Edeka supermarket, where she wanted to buy cheese for a pizza for her and her flatmates. Now the three friends are counting the days that Karla has been missing. And they tell each other about their feelings, and of inconsistency of their feelings. (…)
The director Christopher Rüping chose to make ice the central symbol of his production, but has not turned it into a dramatic paradigm. On the contrary: especially as that this is primarily an epic text, the three actors bring upbeat playfulness to their roles, reflecting the author’s narrative vigour. Milisavljevic has been very lucky with this production and the actors of the Deutsches Theater – the world premiere of her play could not have been more perfect. (…)
Natalia Belitski brings a capricious intelligence to the challenging role of the narrator, and is simply a joy to behold. By constantly commenting on her text through her gestures and facial expressions, she creates an aura for her character poised between irony and identification. On Jonathan Mertz’s stage, the big blocks of ice in the background slowly melt and turn into water, the element to which the title of Maria Milisavljevic’s stupendous play also alludes. ('Brandung' is a tide of water). Born in 1982 in Arnsberg in the Sauerland region of Germany and now living in Toronto, Milisavljevic deservedly won this year’s Kleist Award for Young Dramatists with her play.
In the play itself, however, the glacial chill doesn’t melt – without the author turning this into a moral message. With complete coolness and analytical precision, Milisavljevic tells the story of three twenty-somethings, Me, Her, Him, two of whom have a first name: Martina and Vlado, who are missing a further person. The student Karla was last seen in front of an Edeka supermarket, where she wanted to buy cheese for a pizza for her and her flatmates. Now the three friends are counting the days that Karla has been missing. And they tell each other about their feelings, and of inconsistency of their feelings. (…)
The director Christopher Rüping chose to make ice the central symbol of his production, but has not turned it into a dramatic paradigm. On the contrary: especially as that this is primarily an epic text, the three actors bring upbeat playfulness to their roles, reflecting the author’s narrative vigour. Milisavljevic has been very lucky with this production and the actors of the Deutsches Theater – the world premiere of her play could not have been more perfect. (…)
Natalia Belitski brings a capricious intelligence to the challenging role of the narrator, and is simply a joy to behold. By constantly commenting on her text through her gestures and facial expressions, she creates an aura for her character poised between irony and identification.
On the surface, Brandung is a surreal thriller, and at its core a study about young people without strong roots, searching for a firm foundation for their lives. It is also down to the sharp and intelligent actors Natalia Belitski, Barbara Heynen and Benjamin Lillie that this world premiere stands out among the series of nine pieces at the Ruhrfestspielen. The author plays with narrative stances masterfully, intertwining storytelling, thoughts and dialogue and alternating realistic moments with dense lyricism. Maria Milisavljevic impels the action forward but also constantly breaks it up. Scenes are spooled forward or back, shown from different perspectives – the kind of dramaturgical tricks that we are familiar with from American TV series. (…)
On the surface, Brandung is a surreal thriller, and at its core a study about young people without strong roots, searching for a firm foundation for their lives. It is also down to the sharp and intelligent actors Natalia Belitski, Barbara Heynen and Benjamin Lillie that this world premiere stands out among the series of nine pieces at the Ruhrfestspielen.