At the end of the performance they step up to the ramp, a choir of refugees. Twenty-one women from Ukraine and political refugees from Belarus, the oldest is 71 years old, the youngest is a nine-year-old girl. In an inferno of voices that seems to come straight from hell, they repeat a single sentence in a variety of tones and volumes, bitter and matter-of-fact, angry and desperate: “Listen to what this war really is.” As a Western European who is spoiled in every respect, you sit in the audience ashamed because of course you have no idea “what this war really is.” Listening hasn’t become any easier after the many months of war; your own numbness may be a healthy form of self-protection or just comfortable, or both. The choir of refugees on stage stands for the people who cannot afford to switch off because the war has determined every day of their lives for 21 months. This discrepancy in experience between stage and audience also makes the performance in Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater as oppressive and moving as perhaps only the theater can be.
“Mothers” at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater: Depressing, bitter and admirable – culture
