A new form of theater inspired by migrants and their stories is taking Berlin by storm.
The term “post-migrant theater” was coined by Turkish-German theater director Shermin Langhoff who took up her role as co-director of the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin last year.
It interweaves themes of migration and the actors’ backgrounds into the stage pieces to reflect modern migrant experiences. Ms. Langhoff was able to use Germany’s migrant playwrights and a cast of mainly non-German actors.
The movement happening at the Gorki is bold, considering Germany’s mostly homogenous theater landscape, a bastion of ‘Hochkultur’ (high culture) and peopled by German actors.
“The success of the Gorki Theater in Berlin can be attributed to how it is breaking taboos,” said Matthias Lilienthal, one of Germany’s most prolific theater producers.
“It was unheard of for a classic German theater to form a whole ensemble with migrant actors. This development is hugely important for Berlin,” he said.
The smallest of all Berlin’s state theaters, the Gorki was established in 1952, and named after the Russian writer Maxim Gorki, who was more known for his political activism than his literary work.
According to Matthias Warstat, professor of theater studies at the Free University in Berlin, the Gorki’s location in a side street off the touristy Unter den Linden, the main avenue that linked former East and West Berlin, is a partial reason for the theater’s lack of profile.
“The Gorki Theater was never quite like the other Berlin theaters in the sense that one could never quite (categorize) it,” said Mr. Warstat.
“There was the more conservative and classic theater audience that went to the Deutsche Theater, an audience that liked the minimalist approach of the Berliner Ensemble and the West-Berlin theater-goers who went to the Schaubühne. And then there was the Gorki,” he added.
The Gorki’s odd-man-out status may have proved a bonus for co-director Shermin Langhoff, giving her the freedom to bring to life a whole new form of theater, one that is socially and politically fresh and inclusive.
(...)
Zum Original