© Fabian Hammerl

Wolf

Thalia Theater (Hamburg)
#Youth Theatre
When: Tue 06.05. 20:00
Wed 07.05. 14:30 | GRIPS Podewil - with follow-up conversation
Wed 07.05. 19:00
Where: GRIPS Podewil
Recommended for ages: 13+
Duration: 90 minutes, no intermission

About

Imagine your mother shows you a brochure. A holiday camp in the middle of the forest. You only really like trees as a cupboard. But your mother doesn't get any holidays, so you are allowed to go to beautiful nature for a week with a group of teenagers and poorly paid counsellors. A great offer, but you don't feel like it. You share your hut with Jörg, who likes to stay on the sidelines because no one likes him. But he knows a lot about plants and likes to hike. You are more interested in good stories. At night, moonlight falls through the window, and a wolf sits in front of the hut. A nightmare. Jörg snores, and you are afraid. Jörg has stress with Marko and his boys. He is a loser and has to endure a lot. What can you do? Maybe the solution would be to stand by Jörg. Sometimes you get angry. And then? That's your story. You say, ‘My name is Kemi, by the way.’

 

Follow-up conversations

Follow-up conversation after the presentation on 7 May at 2:30 p.m.

Credits

By: Saša Stanišić

Director: Camilla Ferraz

Stage: Nadin Schumacher

Costumes: Katharina Arkit

Dramaturgy: Julia Lochte

Music: CLARKS PLANET

With: Clara Brauer, Johannes Hegemann, Steffen Siegmund

Vote

If you go to the theatre to follow an exciting story, then ‘Wolf’ is the right choice for you. The first novel by Sasa Stanisic, which is considered excellent in children's and youth literature, is no longer an insider tip for children's and youth theatres either.

‘Evening is slowly approaching like a bus and Mr Koriander reads a story aloud, just managing to get to the end without falling asleep. The story has a moral: ‘If you go through the world kindly, the world will treat you kindly.’ What nonsense, right? So, whoever comes up with something like that has never had any real problems, has never been on their own, or poor, or ‘differentised’. – which on the one hand can be read as a smug dig at the youth theatre classic of the 2010s (‘Tschick’), on the other hand shows the novel's concern: to deal with real problems without simplifying them. And it is not easy, the story about friendship, ‘change’, empathy, self-empowerment and responsibility. But it provides a wonderful template for using a great deal of wit, imagination and situation comedy to explore the mechanisms of social exclusion in the theatre. The teenagers are, how could it be otherwise, taken out of their everyday environment and shipped off to a holiday camp that the main character didn't even want to go to in the first place. Here, the conflicts can be observed and intensified. And in doing so, ‘Wolf’ takes on a new perspective: not the perpetrator, not the victim of exclusion, but a witness.

This production is also noteworthy because it dispenses with a number of things: explicit depictions of violence, one or two story detours, specific sets or furry full costumes. The entertaining and fast-paced production by Camilla Ferraz concentrates on narrative theatre and is convincing not only because she places two completely passionate actors (Johannes Hegemann and Steffen Siegmund) on the starkly reduced and abstract stage (Nadin Schumacher) in the Gaußstraße garage, but also because Clara Brauer is the perfect partner to act with and her spherical dream pop provides a completely fitting soundtrack.

Thilo Grawe 

Content Note

Content warnings: Bullying and marginalisation are explicitly depicted and acts of violence are implied. Ableist language is used in places. Anxiety and ‘otherness’ are thematised.

Sensory stimuli: The theatre is dark in places. Water sounds such as splashing and rushing create loud, sometimes muffled noises. Fog is used in places and mosquito spray is used.