The Maxim Gorki Theatre, located in the Choral Academy on the boulevard Unter den Linden, is the smallest and most beautiful of Berlin’s ensemble theatres and also a historically significant building. Founded in 1952 as a theatre for contemporary productions, it became a Stadttheater (municipal theatre) for the citizens of East Berlin in the very best sense – it was both critical and dissident. In 1988, when Thomas Langhoff staged Volker Braun’s Übergangsgesellschaft (A Changing Society), the theatre prophetically anticipated the peaceful revolution of the 9th of November, 1989.
It was also the 9th of November, but in the year 1848, that the first freely elected Prussian national assembly was driven out of the city – the assembly had been working on a democratic constitution for Prussia in the Choral Academy. Spanning the period between these two events is the story of the fight for a democratically constituted, just and open society: from the declaration of a German Republic in 1918, the November pogroms of 1938 and the oppression and murder of the Jews, to the unification of the city and the country, leading ultimately to today‘s debates surrounding the future of Berlin as a diverse European metropolis.
Are we once again living in a society in transition? The question inevitably arises when we are faced with a permanent crisis in economy and politics, a crisis which results in even more severe social and cultural conflicts in our societies.
During our opening season 2013/14, the ensemble of the Gorki will address these kinds of transitional situations and invite the public to engage with classics like Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Maxim Gorki’s Children of the Sun and Volker Braun’s Übergangsgesellschaft (A Changing Society). Our programme covers the whole aesthetic range of contemporary theatre, including world premieres of new drama, such as Olga Grjasnowa’s Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt (Russians are the Kind of People who like Birch Trees) or Es sagt mir nichts, das sogenannte Draußen (That So-Called Outside Doesn’t Mean Anything to Me) by Sibylle Berg and Schwimmen Lernen (Learning to Swim) by Marianna Salzmann, our associate playwright, right up to Yael Ronen’s research pieces. The team of directors who will create the productions for the opening of our new season in November and December include Nurkan Erpulat, Gorki’s associate director, Sebastian Nübling, Yael Ronen, Lukas Langhoff, Falk Richter, Hakan Savaş Mican and Christian Weise.
