There will be a tent. What sounds like a temporary solution at first glance is actually good news that some people may have been longing for. In this year’s edition of the “Radikal Jung” festival, a real place to stay with a program is to be created in the inner courtyard of the Volkstheater. That’s something that was missing last year, when the festival for young directors took place for the first time in the new building on Tumblingerstraße.
After the performances – with heavy rain at times – there was no meeting point for those who didn’t want to sit in the restaurant. The Volkstheater has drawn its conclusions from this, so the tent is coming. And there is also space for what was a lot of fun last year: the supporting program of “Radikal Jung”, which is allowed to continue turning the ideas and motifs of the productions freely and obliquely.
The festival, which this time is showing 13 productions by young directors and selected by a four-person jury, runs from Thursday, April 27th to Friday, May 5th. Ten productions come from Germany, two from Austria and one from Belgium. It’s a program in which festival director Jens Hillje can see a turn towards “big stuff”. The longing is there to tell stories on stage that are based on literary texts and at the same time carry out a socio-political interpretation. The focus on identity issues seems to have disappeared. The festival promises to be exciting both aesthetically and in terms of content.
The beginning consists of a triad, which should be nicely dissonant due to the different pitches: “Zwietalk”, “Radical Hope” and “Sistas!”. What lies behind the titles, which are not necessarily popular, is the following: The Burgtheater production “Zwietalk” is a premiere that premiered in December 2022 in the Academy Theater. It is based on a text by Peter Handke, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, directed for the first time at the Burgtheater by Rieke Süsskow.
Handke dedicated his book “Zwietalk” to the two actors Otto Sander and Bruno Ganz, two theater people who remember their past in exchanges. Riekow has found a new, surprising setting for this: the evening takes place in a kind of home where people of a certain age prepare for death. A heartless place, who dies next will be determined by games. The production, which dares a lot, not only convinced the “Radikal Jung” jury, but also those of the Berlin Theatertreffen. “Zwietalk” will also be shown there.
“Radical Hope” from Belgium is one of two performances at this year’s festival for young directors.
(Photo: Nathan Ishar)
“Radical Hope – Eye to Eye” and later the “Dan Daw Show” are the only performances to be seen at the festival. Both are marked with an age rating due to the explicit sexual acts that appear in them. “Radical Hope” is a work by Antwerp-based Stef Van Looveren that is thematically elusive, targeting multiple emotional levels and opulently working with imagery, music and scenery.
As the third opening production, a Berlin co-production of the Volksbühne and the collective Glossy Pain, “Sistas!” by Golda Barton with old theater material: Chekhov’s “Three Sisters”. Barton wrote the drama, the three sisters do not live in the Russian province, but in an apartment in Zehlendorf – and they are black. Against the backdrop of the Chekhov play, the evening by directors Isabelle Redfern and Katharina Stoll deals with topics such as racism, appropriation, identity and the question of how permeable a theater classic is for PoCs. The play was recently nominated for the Mühlheim Dramatist Prize.
The young director is attracted to novels
This prelude alone makes it clear how polyphonic “Radikal Jung” is again. It is interesting that the young director is obviously drawn to the novel material. Six of them have been adapted for the stage – not counting the Handke text and the Odyssey (Stas Zhyrkov, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus). The best-known is probably “The Master and Margarita” after Mikhail Bulgakov, which Luise Voigt set up at the National Theater in Weimar. The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Annie Ernaux, is also represented.
Annalisa Enghaben adapted her autobiographical novel “The Event”, in which she describes her unwanted pregnancy, the desire to have an abortion, the taboo surrounding this topic and the loneliness surrounding the abortion, for the Schauspielhaus Hamburg. “Dschinns” brings Fatma Aydemir’s novel, a family story from the nineties, to the stage, “Mein Leben in Aspik” dramatizes Steven Uhly’s family clan exaggeration, Sibylle Berg’s “GRM. Brainfuck” comes to the festival as a “so-called musical”. The Volkstheater also contributes Mathias Spaan’s great stage adaptation of Tom McCarthy’s “8 1/2 Million”. “Radical Young”, it looks like, is almost a small literature course.
The theater classic “Woyzeck” (Jan Friedrich, Theater Magdeburg), but above all the “Gondola Layers” from the Institute for Media, Politics & Theater in Innsbruck fall out of this series. It is a research project on mountain and ski tourism in Tyrol. The basis is discussions with journalists, climate researchers, tourism experts, but also political speeches. “Gondola Story” isn’t supposed to be a documentary theater, but to skilfully drift off into satire.
From Austria comes the development of the piece “Gondola Layers” for mountain and ski tourism in Tyrol.
(Photo: Birgit Gufler)
“We address a wide range of topics,” says Frederik Mayet, artistic director of the Volkstheater. Above all, it is important that it is a public festival and not one where only experts meet. There must also be a center for follow-up talks, a supporting program and exchange – whether it could be a tent like in Brienner Straße is now being tried out.
In any case, Florian Fischer, who put together the supporting program, will have Tobias Ginsburg perform there. The author did unrecognized research in right-wing extremist circles for “The Last Men of the West”, and he combines his readings with comedy. The supporting program also includes an escape room game. In “Escape Poverty”, the participants have to escape from a cramped home in 60 minutes – the artist Deborah Sengl uses this to address child poverty. There’s striptease again in substance, this time by and for lesbians, women, non-binary, trans and intersex people. The festival will again be accompanied by a master class and at the very end the audience prize will be awarded. A lot of new things in the tried and tested processes of this festival, which is now taking place for the 17th time. But now let’s get started.
Radical Young, April 27th to May 5th, Volkstheater, www.muenchner-volkstheater.de