War (Krieg)

Doctor, historian and writer Rainald Goetz etched himself into the memories of a whole generation of theatre and literature enthusiasts with one particular performance: At the 1983 Ingeborg-Bachmann-Competition, he cut his forehead with a razorblade, to give his manifesto Subito the necessary “Oomph”. Goetz’ text Krieg (War), published in 1986 and containing, according to his preliminary remarks, “three theatre plays”, is an equally strong “Oomph” and this is exactly how Robert Borgmann will stage it. In a stage space of his own design, he will create visually and acoustically exuberant images to illustrate each of the three individual plays Heiliger Krieg (Holy War), Schlachten (Battles) and Kolik (Colic). Describing a variety of hells, Krieg is a language sculpture and status description of the internal constitution of a then still divided Germany. From the global hell portrayed in the first part, it takes the audience into the domestic hell of a family in the second, and ends up inside the brain of a slowly dying man.