by Yael Ronen & the Company | directed by Yael Ronen (ca. 115 min.) | German, Arabic, Hebrew, English | German surtitles | afterwards: film and audience talk (total length with performance: ca. 150 min.)

A co-production by the Schaubühne with the Habima National Theatre of Israel (Tel Aviv) and the Ruhrtriennale 2009, commissioned by Theater der Welt 2008 in Halle, supported by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes and the Goethe Institute.

Premiere: March 20th, 2009

In a »work in progress« Israeli playwright and director Yael Ronen, together with her team and a company of Israeli, German and Palestinian actors analyses the Gordian Knot that characterizes these three nations. The participants come from very different family backgrounds. Some come from families where relatives were born on opposite sides of the divided Germany, or are either Muslim or Christian Palestinians who have Israeli passports and live in Haifa or Tel Aviv, or come from Jewish families with different origins – from Europe, the Middle East or North Africa.
As well as discussing the Here and Now, there will be a focus on those years that lay down the roots of our ideas about ourselves today. Concepts like memory, guilt, what makes a victimizer and what makes a victim, and what those concepts mean to us now, both in their public and private use, will be scrutinized. This will not be about competing national founding myths, but an attempt to comprehend the foundations upon which our personal identity is based within a particular national context.
The first phase of this »work-in-progress« took place in Israel and Germany in June 2008. The results of this were presented at the Festival of World Theatre 2008 in Halle. The second phase will be a furtherworking period in Tel Aviv and Berlin, during which a performance piece will be developed, based on the findings of the first presentation.
Yael Ronen (born 1976 in Jerusalem) is one of Israel’s most important and provocative theatre makers. She studied playwriting at HB Studio in New York and directing at Seminar Hakibbutzim College in Tel Aviv. Her plays include »Guide to a good life« (2003, Habima National Theater, Tel Aviv), »Plonter« (2005, Cameri Theater of Tel Aviv), an adaptation of »Antigone« (2007, Staatsschauspiel Dresden), »Nut Case« (2008, Habima National Theater) and »Bat Yam« (2008, Wroclawski Teatr Wspolczesny). Her plays »Plonter« (Confused) and »Guide to a good life« were shown at the Schaubühne as part of the 2007 Festival of International New Drama (F.I.N.D. 7)
A co-production by the Schaubühne with the Habima National Theatre of Israel (Tel Aviv) and the Ruhrtriennale 2009, commissioned by Theater der Welt 2008 in Halle, supported by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes and the Goethe Institute.
Performance rights with the author

Guest Performances:
Tel Aviv (October 2008, October 2009, March 2010, February 2011, March 2012)
Parma (October 2008)
Essen (September 2009)
Chemnitz (November 2009)
Kaiserslautern (November 2009)
Konstanz (November 2009)
München (November 2009)
Prag (November 2009)
Saarbrücken (November 2009)
Wiesbaden (November 2009)
Braunschweig (December 2009)
Dessau (December 2009)
Reims (December 2009)
Weimar (December 2009)
Hamburg (January 2010)
Lodz (March 2010)
Stockholm (May 2010)
Sachnin (Israel) (February 2011)
Arhus (May 2011)
Braga (May 2011)
Porto (May 2011)
Thessaloniki (October 2011)