IM EXIL – BEN BECKER LIEST JOSEPH ROTH

In the organizer's words:

Why Joseph Roth?

Not only the experience of artistic isolation during the pandemic, but also the threatening political climate in Europe today are reason enough for Ben Becker to focus on the brilliant writer Joseph Roth. Following his program BEN BECKER - APOKALYPSE, in which he used Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" to explore the isolation of the individual in the face of the human abyss, Ben Becker is now devoting himself to the legendary exiled author Joseph Roth, who combines so many contradictions: holy drunkard and hopeless scrounger, Austrian Jew and bohemian figure of Berlin nightlife, burnt-out exile and one of the greatest storytellers of the 20th century. The focus is not only on the unique author, but above all on Joseph Roth the man, who finds himself defencelessly at the mercy of the political catastrophes of his time.

The legend of the holy drunkard

In the first part of the evening, Ben Becker reads Joseph Roth in the original language and gives his voice to the unforgettable key story "The Legend of the Holy Drinker", an abysmal and touching story from Roth's last years in exile in Paris.

The holy drunkard

In the second half, he approaches him through the friendly account of a contemporary: Géza von Cziffra draws a true-to-life portrait of Joseph Roth in his memoir "Der heilige Trinker" (The Holy Drinker), both against the backdrop of their drunken Berlin nights together and in the raging torrent of exile. By bringing together their lines of flight, the two parts create an astonishing, multi-layered and vivid portrait of the artist in exile, which also reflects the present day in a surprising and frightening way.

BEN BECKER READS JOSEPH ROTH

Readings with Ben Becker are an event. The choice of author is so personal that in every performance the actor merges with the subject of the text and its author. After Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", Ben Becker has chosen texts by and about the exiled author Joseph Roth. With his novels "Das Spinnennetz", "Radetzkymarsch" and "Hiob", which have been made into several films, Roth is not only one of the most important German-language storytellers of the 20th century, he is himself one of the most enigmatic figures of his time and a story in his own right. Born an Austrian Jew and chronically broke as a journalist, he was one of the unforgettable figures of the nightlife scene in Vienna and Berlin. After the Nazis seized power, he was one of the first authors to have his books burned. He fled as early as 1933 and became a leading voice in exile literature; at the same time, he was and remained a drinker, always on the verge of madness. It is precisely this fusion of literature and life, biography and fiction, man and myth that fascinates Ben Becker about Joseph Roth and which he brings to life on stage like no other with his voice and his way of reading.

Musical surroundings and soundscapes

For every literary performance, Ben Becker looks for a congenial sound as a fundamental component of his program. It is always content-related impulses that guide him in the conception of suitable musical material.

For IM EXIL, he therefore turned to Wolfgang Ambros. It was not only the Austrian origins of Roth and Ambros that were decisive. Above all, the emotional poetics of singer and musician Ambros' lyrics lead almost directly into the literary world of Joseph Roth: the feeling of homelessness and independence at the same time, longing, farewell and passionate devotion to the world and to life paired with touching lightness, always walking on a knife's edge between abyss and boundless freedom.

IM EXIL will feature four pieces of music, two of which Wolfgang Ambros recorded especially for Ben Becker in Vienna, thus fulfilling a great wish of his, as he is also a great Ambros fan in his private life.

The tracks that Ambros re-recorded for Becker's stage production are: "De Kinettn wo i schlof" and "I glaub I geh jetzt". Both songs are from the album "Es lebe der Zentralfriedhof", which Ambros rearranged exclusively for Ben Becker and recorded as a theatrical version, as a soundscape. They are incredibly touching tracks that give the listener the famous goosebumps moment.