Das kunstseidene Mädchen

In the organizer's words:

Das kunstseidene Mädchen - based on the novel by Irmgard Keun - monologue with Pauline Kästner - premiere on January 14, 2023 - Schauspielhaus, Foyer - Schauspiel

Irmgard Keun's "Das kunstseidene Mädchen" is one of the most successful novels of the Weimar Republic and is still read enthusiastically today.

In 1931, with a stolen fur coat in her luggage, 18-year-old stenotypist Doris flees from the provinces to the big city of Berlin to escape the importunities of her boss. At a time when money is tight and the future seems bleak, she dreams of a life as a movie star. Doris wants to be a glamour. "With a white car and bath water that smells like perfume, and everything like Paris." She writes down her experiences between glamour and the gutter, not in a diary but in a kind of screenplay, in a breathless language full of cleverness, poetry and wit. Like a film cut, she jumps from place to place and from man to man: from a white slaver to a national-minded big industrialist to Mr. Brenner, who was shot blind in the war and to whom Doris now describes nocturnal Berlin. When she meets a wealthy man, she believes for a brief moment that she has reached her destination. But then the wife returns, and Doris moves on. On New Year's Eve, she is approached by Ernst, with a voice like dark green moss. At first she finds him disgusting, then she doesn't want to leave - and writes him a farewell letter after all. For all the roles this world has intended for her are ultimately nothing: whore, wife, glamour. And so Doris remains until the end a Unbehauste and becomes no glamor, but thinks to herself: "Maybe I'll go to a fancy dark bar - and dance and drink and dance - I'm so in the mood.</