A, B and C. These are the names of the three characters in Ruth Johanna Benrath’s radio play PSALM / from the depths. Whereby: Figures is already saying too much. It’s three voices, that’s more appropriate. Those of Inga Busch, Birte Schnöink and Ulrich Noethen. Together, the three actors in this play are the collective ABC. But even if that is a synonym: these three letters do not make an alphabet.
In her radio play, which Stefan Kanis staged for MDR, Benrath tells of a desperate struggle – for meaning, for traces of the divine. But not only the ability to comprehend, but also the human ability to express is too small to come to a deeper knowledge that can also be communicated. A, B and C stand for the futility of grasping the whole. Especially not in words.
Overwriting old texts, rethinking and reorganizing thoughts, digging deeper and deeper into their poetry: That is Ruth Johann Benrath’s specialty. This time it is Luther’s cosmos, his translation of the Bible, especially the Psalms and his doubts about faith, which she condenses with her own literary expression into a kind of, yes: elegiac psalm, a mixture of poem, song and prayer. Brimming with doubts.
How much God does man need in order to be completely with himself?
The search for a living God does not take place against the backdrop of an enlightened, secular, rationalistic present. Rather, it is of an archaic nature, immanent to human beings. And yet something has happened since Luther: skepticism has increased. Also the disappointment and anger at still groping in the dark. “I was tired of screaming for a language that worked,” says one of the voices towards the end. Nobody screams here. A, B and C just keep piling on questions. However, there are no reliable answers. Then I’d rather put an end to transcendence and the urgent wish: “Can you please let me go!” Like all questions, it dies away.
PSALM / from the depths points clearly beyond the religious or even just Christian level of the topic. The self-understanding of man, the foundation of his spiritual existence, is dealt with fundamentally and in a very elegant way. Or, in other words: his identity. Which puts you in the middle of an equally extremely wide-ranging debate that Mithu Sanyal in identity spreads with relish. And in which it is also very much about questions of faith and – one level deeper – about what does not hold the world together, but what holds people together in their innermost being.
The professor argues faster than her audience can reflect
Now the radio adaptation of a current bestseller novel – identity was published a good year ago – initially not much more than a cultural free ride and basically not worth mentioning. In this case, however, things are different. On the one hand, because Sanyal reflects on the numerous aspects of identity debates in her novel, so pointedly and also in all their irreconcilable contradictions, that it seems to be unrivaled at the moment. On the other hand, the story is much better suited for the radio play genre than other prose due to its polyphony and the inclusion of media echoes.
It goes, so much to remember, in identity a professor who teaches Intercultural Studies and whose own identity as a person of color turns out to be fake – at least in the perception of a broad public majority. The director Eva Solloch has condensed the debate – and the novel is such a debate, not least because of the form chosen by Mithu Sanyal – for 1Live, WDR’s young wave, once again into a 110-minute two-part series. The quick-wittedness of the professor is a help. Sometimes you can hardly keep up with the thinking. This is not a shortcoming of the radio play, it is the basis of the public success of this character in the cosmos of this story: she argues faster than most people can reflect.
The two new radio plays are much less complex, but no less successful The stench of the world or mating dance is a dead language by Caroline Bélisle (Director: Anouschka Trocker) and KITA – The humanly possible by Antje Vauh and Carina Pesch. In both plays, people are looking for their place in the world without the fundamentals being involved. Whereby: Trusting in an AI when raising children also affects human self-image.
PSALM / from the depthsMDR Kultur, May 23, 2022, 10 p.m.
identity, 1Live, May 23, 2022, 11 p.m. Part 2: May 30th.
The stench of the world or mating dance is a dead languageSR 2, May 22, 2022, 5:04 p.m.
KITA – The humanly possibleWDR 3, May 22, 2022, 7:04 p.m.