/ PUPPET MAKING, PUPPETRY /
DIRECTING: Dr. Susann Neuenfeld / Panzerkreuzer Rottkäppchen
PREMIERE: 2025. Friedrich-Wolf Theater, Eisenhüttenstadt
A documentary performance about the post-industrial landscape of Eisenhüttenstadt, and collective memory, condensing the voices, objects, and spaces of a disappearing working-class world into a theatrical archive.
“Seventy years – the history of a city and a theatre is concentrated in this extraordinary, polyphonic stage event. Hüttenstadt Elegy is not a conventional theatre play, but a walk-through, communal theatre experience: it evokes memories, voices, and dreams that have accumulated since the opening of the Friedrich-Wolf Theatre in 1955, while simultaneously placing the questions of the present into the space.
Eisenhüttenstadt – once a socialist planned city shaped by the promise of the steel industry – today struggles with depopulation and unemployment. Precisely in this context, theatre gains special significance as a place of encounter: as a space in which a community can observe itself and retell its own history.
The Berlin-based artists’ collective Panzerkreuzer Rotkäppchen collaborates with numerous local participants – choirs, dance ensembles, musicians, visual artists, and local storytellers. The result unfolds across multiple locations and permeates the spaces of the theatre: from the foyer through the dressing rooms to the orchestra pit. Movement, music, puppetry, and personal stories interweave into a mosaic that is both remembrance and celebration – an encounter between past and present in a city whose identity is continuously reshaped.”
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