When it comes to family, everyone can have their say. It’s our first, most fundamental experience in life: trust and mistrust, love and hate, power and powerlessness, justice and injustice. In the family we experience these extremes for the first time and practice dealing with them on a daily basis. So family is the fate that bears our name. Even if we don’t have one. Family ties are part of the fundamental fabric from which our reality is woven and patche dtogether. But even if a family is familiar, unavoidable and omnipresent, it is never uncomplicated, usually exhausting and sometimes catastrophic. And that’s the way it has always been: Cronus devours all his children until his son Zeus emasculates him; Oedipus and Medea aren’t very family-minded either. In the Greek tragedy, daughters are sacrificed by their own fathers, only to be avenged by their mothers, who are then punished for their crimes by their sons. And once the family massacre is complete, little remains – in the doomed house of Atreus, the only ones remaining after five generations are the siblings Orestes and Electra. But sibling relationships are usually the longest-lasting relationships in life. The experience of living without parents is the stuff not only of myths

and fairy tales; it also appears again and again in classics of children’s literature. “She had no mother and no father, and that was of course very nice because there was no one to tell her to go to bed just when she was having the most fun.” The best thing that can happen to a child in a children’s book is for the mother to die before he or she is twelve years old. What adventures would Pippi Longstocking, Tom Sawyer, Jim Knopf, Harry Potter or Lyra Belacqua have had if their parents had been constantly supervising them? Being orphaned early in life is almost a prerequisite for superheroes, as shown by Spiderman, Superman and Batman. But while superheroes remain lone fighters, gangs of children form surrogate families. And that’s always been the way, too: from The Little Rascals to The Famous Five and The Lost Boys in Peter Pan through to Stranger Things. In the 2018/19 season we ask why people band together, and against what or whom? Is blood really always thicker than water? What differentiates friends and family? What kind of my family ties do I have and who would be my chosen relatives, my blood brotheror my soul sister?

As part of a collaborative project with Berlin’s LesArt centre for children’s and youth literature, the novel Bis die Sterne zittern (Until the Stars Tremble) by Johannes Herwig is brought to the stage as a staged reading with young people. Set in the late 1930s, it tells the story of the Leipzig Meuten, gangs of children and teenagers who resisted the Hitler Youth and League of German Girls. The gang members value freedom above all else – but they also have attitude. And that isn’t without its dangers.

Being part of a community, making your ownrules, sticking together, standing up for something – that’s what makes themany gangs, cliques and groups that populate children’s and youth literature so fascinating. You might grow out of being one of the “The Little Rascals” or “The Lost Boys” but the secret longing to be part of a sworn community often lasts a lifetime. Youth Club 1: Together for 12 to 15-year-olds, is all about this desire for togetherness.

What if we could choose our own family? Friends who are always there for us. Role models who show us who we want to be. Allies who help us to get ahead. Are they then our “chosen family” or are they just friends, role models, allies? And why even hang on to the word “family”? Isn’t that very 20th century? Youth Club 2: Chosen Family goes in search of new constellations, ideal parents and siblings we never had.

n Youth Club 3, the Junges DT and the Actionists of Gorki Theatre work towards a common cause for the first time: Junges DT and the Actionists BOUNCEN IN BAUTZEN!

Have you ever wondered what your parents got up to when they were your age? 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of important political and social upheavals: in Germany the fall of the Wall, in Poland the beginning of the Third Polish Republic, in Russia the first relatively free nationwide elections. Time for a dialogue between the generations. In the tri-national project Talking About Your Generation: 2019. Thirty Years On, six young people from Moscow, Warsaw and Berlin, respectively, visit their home cities and ask their parents questions. A generation on, what shapes, moves, divides and connects us in Poland, Russia and Germany?

In the Spring Camp 2019 – Forming Ties! we establish a temporary theatre family. But who is in charge if there are no parents around? Will it be more of a commune, a fraternity or a mafia?  Hierarchy or anarchy? You and me, bros & sis, or us against them? In six camps, new family constellations are created that don’t involve any kind of kinship. Whether a clique, community, patchwork family, guerilla troupe or artists’ village, we try out our artistic visions of community! Through theatre, performance, dance and music, artists and 100 young people ask the question: How do we want to live together?

In the 2018/19 season, the Deutsches Theater, together with class teachers, drama teachers and their pupils, will once again become the venue for dialogues on social issues and aesthetic approaches.I n free WORKSHOPS and POST-PERFORMANCE DISCUSSIONS, we will talk about the themes and directorial signatures of our productions and in how they relate to the real world.

We are also interested in offering school pupils individual ACCESS to our productions: accompanying a piece from the start of rehearsals right through to the premiere provides an impulse for personally exploring the material and developing personal responses to the play. The results will be presented at the premiere – we thereby also invite a “young person’s perspective” into our theatre.

In order to establish personal ties and gather first-hand impressions, there will be one evening a month throughout the season when teachers and pedagogues are invited to stay for a post-performance DRINK to talk about the performance in an informal atmosphere. Reduced-price tickets are offered for these performances.

In NEUE NACHBARSCHAFTEN (New Neighbourhoods),we will be working together with the Oberstufenzentrum für Bekleidung und Mode (Educational Centre for Clothing and Fashion) as part of the school and theatre partnership TUSCH, in order to deepen our work with the Willkommensklassen (“welcome classes” in schools for non-Germans, particularly refugees). We will explore the topic of freely chosen relationships and bring the result to the stage of the Box as part of the OPEN DT. Our KLASSENZIMMERSTÜCK (Classroom Play) is being selected and staged this season so that it is also suitable fornon-native speakers. In Sibylle Berg’s Mein ziemlicher seltsamer Freund Walter (My Rather Odd Friend Walter), Leon struggles with loneliness: He is curious, has many interests, but no friends. At school hetries not to attract attention and at home he is alone. During his nightly observations of the universe, a spaceship lands. The unusual acquaintanceship with the alien Klakalnamanazdta – or Walter, as he calls him – helps Leon to help himself. It is about the small but decisive steps that you need to take to assert yourself in the world, at school and in the family. This “classroom play” is recommended for children age 10 and above.

Other projects and activities at jungesdt.de