The classification is completely arbitrary, red or green. Whoever gets a red sticky dot goes to the left, the other to the right. That’s life, you just don’t have a say in some things, in this case choosing a place in the Marstall. The Thai-German co-production “I don’t care” will be shown there. The stage is in the middle, with the audience sitting to the left and right. You can’t see each other, partitions block the view. After all: You sit in a color block.
This arrangement seems impractical at first, parts of what is happening on stage remain hidden. But the issue is the permanent binary division, left or right, 0 or 1, woman or man. In this respect, the stage by Anna-Elisabeth Frick and Jarunun Phantachat, who both also directed, is a statement. The journalist and author Jürgen Berger provided the text for the evening, which can be seen three more times in the Marstall. His docu-fiction in German, English and Thai is based on conversations he had in Thailand and Germany with trans people who are struggling with a simple assignment, a sharp demarcation. To problematize this concept, that’s what it’s about.
That’s why it’s only logical that the stage gains in permeability over the course of the 80 minutes. Mareike Beykirch, Sarut Komalittipong and Pathavee Thepkraiwan act on it. Sometimes they are mystical storytellers, sometimes trans men or women, sometimes show hosts and contestants. Many ideas were pursued in order to turn the information – from the difficulty of getting a different name in the passport, to operations to toilet visits – into drama. The three wonderful performers thoroughly knead the undramatic original, play out what they find with great gesture, plus video and text overlays.
This wild back-and-forth keeps the tension of the docu-fiction high, but it makes it difficult to empathize with the problem. For this, every conflict is tipped too quickly into the comic absurd. Nevertheless: There is nowhere else that offers a similarly in-depth and playful evening on trans people, especially not with a comparative view of two countries.
I do not caredocumentary by Jürgen Berger, Marstall, Tuesday to Thursday, October 18 to 20, 8 p.m