Zonenrandgebiet

In the organizer's words:

German-German border experience by Alexander Eisenach

Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the city and district of Kassel were located in the so-called zonal border area - an approximately 40-kilometer-wide strip of the Federal Republic of Germany along the border with the GDR. Situated away from the main economic routes, a dead end to the east, the towns and communities were affected by structural problems.

In a new project by director and author Alexander Eisenach, the Staatstheater Kassel sets out in search of stories between East and West, between demolition and new beginnings, despair and hope. Starting from Kassel and its location on the edge of the zone, Alexander Eisenach goes in search of history and stories on the subject of German division and reunification in biographies and literature - between stories of flight, life on both sides of the Wall and the growing together of the two states after 1989.

"How does history continue into the present? How do we live with the ruptures in the landscape and in biographies? Which utopias and hopes have died and which live on? The border zone is not history that has been overcome. It lives on in the landscape and the stories that come to life on our stage. The demons of the past never rest and shake us out of the sleep of a self-absorbed present."

Alexander Eisenach is an author and director. His plays are characterized by the interweaving of different temporal and narrative levels and thus always show the simultaneity of seemingly separate themes. He works at Schauspiel Frankfurt, Schauspielhaus Graz, Deutsches Theater Berlin, Berliner Ensemble and Residenztheater Munich, among others. In the 2022/23 season, he developed the play Anthropos Antigone (premiere) at Staatstheater Kassel, in which Eisenach combined the ancient story of Antigone with current issues relating to climate change.