When asked what a radio play is and how it distinguishes itself from other radio genres, the renowned radio play maker Andreas Ammer once replied: Radio play is everything that the radio play department of a station finances. To that extent is I’m broke without me by Gesche Piening is definitely a radio play, although the piece could also pass as a feature or radio essay.
It has long been a tried and tested method to wrest so much information from the present through extensive research that it can be condensed into a piece of artistically reflected reality by means of fictionalization. Andres Veiel (The kick), Paul Plamper (The jump) or the collective “Rimini Protokoll” (We here) in the best possible way.
Gesche Piening has also already done her first radio play Lonely Dies More Often – A Requiem worked like this from last year. And she does it again for the successor I’m broke without me. It’s about personal bankruptcies. In other words, people who are no longer solvent and have to officially arrange for their debts to be reduced through a judicial process. Piening spoke to many of those affected, about the reasons and circumstances, about the social and psychological consequences.
Actors repeat these statements. The figures, however – that is the impression made when listening – are hardly alienated, but merely anonymized. Piening, who has also directed, shapes her material less strongly than other writers who work with this method. She lets things stand for themselves, the artistic exaggeration is more subtle with her. Also takes dramaturgical I’m broke without me no distinctive twists and turns, is not composed in a complex manner.
The author takes a back seat as an interpreter, she trusts in the power of what has actually been experienced in this shameful context. In fact, you get some intimate glimpses into a cosmos that usually remains hidden. That’s the quality of I’m broke without me However, because the narrative remains tied to reportage and reports a lot of the same thing, it repeatedly treads on the spot. A little more posture and design, a little more play would be needed to turn the mere image into an argument.
I’m broke without me, Bayern 2, September 10, 9:05 p.m.