English Theatre Berlin / THE LAB
GLOBAL SPOTLIGHT: Germany
October 22, 2012 at 8pm

A staged reading of Innocence (Unschuld) by Dea Loher
Translated and directed by Daniel Brunet

With Dylan Bandy, Priscilla Bergey, Carrie Getman, Ernest Allan Hausmann, Kristi Hughes, Moses O. Leo, Helena Prince, Tomas Spencer, Julie Trappett and others

Followed by a post-performance discussion featuring Sithembile Menck and Julia Lemmle of Bühnenwatch and John von Düffel, dramaturg of the Deutsches Theater production of Unschuld

Presented with special permission from Verlag der Autoren (www.verlagderautoren.de)
and Deutsches Theater Berlin

The Deutsches Theater production of Innocence (Unschuld) was the subject of a
protest on February 12, 2012 organized by Bühnenwatch, a group dedicated to ending
racist practices on German stages. The source of the controversy was the production’s
portrayal of two African characters by white actors in blackface. Written by Dea Loher,
one of Germany’s most popular, prolific and produced contemporary playwrights, this
poetic, expressionistic piece tells the stories of a group of seemingly unrelated characters
existing at the fringes of society. An unnamed European city by the sea. Fadoul and
Elisio, two illegal African immigrants, see a white woman drown and are too afraid
of being deported to save her. A blind young woman, Absolutely, dances naked for
men who can see. Mrs. Hadit searches out the families of victims of violent acts to beg
forgiveness for crimes she did not commit. Franz has found the job of his life: serving the
dead as an undertaker’s assistant, while all that his wife, Rosa, wants from him is a child.
Rosa’s mother, Mrs. Sugar, celebrates the progression of her diabetes by moving in with
them. And Ella, an aging philosopher, burns all of her books and no longer believes in
anything but the unreliability of the world.

Dea Loher is unequivocally one of the most significant and highest esteemed
contemporary German-language playwrights. The author of nearly 20 plays, multiple
radio plays, a libretto, a book of short stories and the recent novel Bugatti taucht auf,
Loher has been awarded nearly every significant German prize for excellence as a
playwright, including the Bertolt Brecht Literature Prize, the Mülheim Drama Prize and
the Berlin Literature Prize, some multiple times. With a body of work dating from 1991,
Loher’s plays are marked by innovative uses and combinations of styles of language,
merging the poetic with the pedestrian, the literary and the laconic, utilizing the resulting
dissonance to great dramatic effect. While her subject matter ranges from small town
life to events torn directly from the pages of international news outlets to historical
and literary figures such as Medea and the Red Army Faction, Loher continually explores what it is that creates communities, what it is that creates connections between
individuals and how these connections are maintained or severed. Loher’s plays have
an impact far beyond the boundaries of the German-speaking world; her work has been
translated into 28 different languages. Her newest play, Am Schwarzen See, will receive
its world premiere at Deutsches Theater Berlin on October 26, 2012.

Daniel Brunet is a theater maker and translator based in Brooklyn and Berlin. His work
is inspired by the differences and similarities between these cities and their respective
countries, cultures and languages. After moving to Berlin with the support of a Fulbright
Scholarship in 2001, he became the 2003 Director in Residence at English Theatre
Berlin and founded THE LAB there, an artist and audience development series. His
directorial work has been seen throughout Germany and the United States, including the
Forum Freies Theater Düsseldorf, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, the HERE
Arts Center, New York and Performance Space 122, New York. He has translated
18 German plays in the last nine years, including works by playwrights as varied as
Roland Schimmelpfennig, Heiner Müller, Ferdinand Bruckner and Moritz Rinke. These
translations have been performed around the world from New York to New Delhi to
Melbourne. Brunet is also the translator of the 2006 remake of Michael Haneke’s film
Funny Games. He received a 2010 Pen Translation Grant for his translation of Dea
Loher’s The Last Fire and a 2013 Literature Fellowship in Translation from the National
Endowment for the Arts for his translations of Dea Loher’s plays. Brunet is currently
working once again as a LAB Curator and is developing a series of performances
examining the realities of expatriates and immigrants in Berlin.

Innocence is part of Colorblind?, a series of programming at English Theatre Berlin
examining the portrayal of racial identity on stage and in dramatic literature.

English Theatre Berlin
THE LAB
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Subway:
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Buses: M19 & 104
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