Ulrich Tukur & Christian Redl

In the organizer's words:

The magic of a language in flux
German poems and ballads

In a time of increasing destruction of language and simultaneous visual overstimulation, the language artists Ulrich Tukur and Christian Redl want to remind us of the beginnings, of the origins of theater: the text, the language with which a good story is told. In addition to their favorite poems, they have chosen a form that has almost been unjustly forgotten: The ballad. Most people only know it as an agonizing memory from German lessons.

But like the detective novel, it thrives on moments of suspense and thrilling effects. And as in this related genre, it is always about murder, adultery, seduction, infanticide and unrequited love, as Friedrich Schiller, himself an enthusiastic balladeer, noted.

The source is often very popular stories of murder and death, hauntings or love and infidelity. They repeatedly describe the conflict of the individual with society and pose the eternal questions of justice, fate and guilt. But if you read carefully and a little against the grain of the rhymed surface, you will find the proximity to ballads, comedy and colportage, sex and crime. Like an old tabloid newspaper at the highest literary level.

Using only their voices and facial expressions, Tukur and Redl conjure up fantastic worlds on stage with texts from Goethe to Fontane and Brecht, which are deeply moving because they always deal with the fates of people.

With: Ulrich Tukur and Christian Redl

On the piano: Olena Kushpler

Directed by: Ulrich Waller

Price information:

St. Pauli Theater ticket hotline: (040) 4711 0 666, st-pauli-theater.de and at all known advance booking offices