In the organizer's words:

A tribute, not a cover show!

A probable misunderstanding should be denied right from the start. As much as IRRLICHTER exclusively features songs by Rio Reiser from all creative phases, from the first Ton Steine Scherben album (1971) to the last solo album "Himmel & Hölle" (1995), it is not a cover show.

So anyone who thinks that two successful and busy film actors (Dana Golombek von Senden & Frank Leo Schröder) have teamed up with a gifted musician (Kai Dannowski) to simply sing their favorite Rio Reiser songs and dabble in another cultural field alongside acting is fundamentally wrong.

IRRLICHTER is much more than a concert. Carried by Rio's songs, the stage play unites the entire thoughts and feelings of this exceptional artist, who would have celebrated his 75th birthday in January 2025, because the well-known and perhaps also lesser-known songs are accompanied by spoken original sounds from interviews and his book. These are not simply recited between the songs, but integrated into the songs in a thematically appropriate way. At the risk of sounding a little pathetic, Golombek, Schröder and Dannowski succeed in condensing Rio Reiser's entire being to its essence in this program. The three of them act as a medium that allows the audience to leave the performance after a good two hours with the feeling that Rio, through the three actors, has once again greeted this world from the afterlife and cleared up clichés to show the audience, the people, who he really was, what his goals were, his dreams and what he meant when he shouted "No power to anyone!" or opened his soul wide for the audience to see with "Forever and you" to the point of total exhaustion.