Luckily, she’s performing! Hannah Zabrisky tritt nicht auf is the title of Falk Richter’s new play. It offers a glimpse into the heart of the theater world — its vanities, its pressure on aging women, its longing for significance. To begin, the revolving stage dictates whether we are in the middle of a rehearsal or already in the performance. Later, only Jule Böwe, in the role of Hannah Zabrisky, determines this. Nina Wetzel’s stage design is a theater carousel: a collection of rehearsal stages, backstage areas, and back rooms that are constantly rearranged. Wandering through this landscape is an ensemble that is, in the best sense, almost too capable. There is the ambitious author desperately trying to impose order, her partner who knows her way around social media and awareness in the theater, the colleague who already understands how the business works and how exhausting it can be, and those who must assert themselves somewhere in between. They all orbit a character who doubts the material that seems so perfectly tailored to her: the celebrated actress Hannah Zabrisky. Hannah Zabrisky Doesn’t Perform offers a look behind the scenes of theater — its vanities and struggles. The play sheds light on the reality for women in the theater.

It’s about aging women realizing how quickly their roles crumble away, while new expectations continuously grow around them. And then there is the outside world, which always finds its way in: crises, conflicts, the collective sense that something is tipping. The play attempts to process all of this, and sometimes fails in a touching way, sometimes in a comical way. Every now and then, I wonder why this topic, of all things, wants to hide behind a shield of irony, until Jule Böwe comes on stage, smoking and drinking whiskey, and makes it beautifully plausible again. The production oscillates between comedy, melodrama, and musical. At times elegant, at times deliberately awkward. Yet it lands perfectly. The evening becomes so delightfully absurd that you catch yourself remembering why you’re sitting in a theater and not in front of a screen. (Although there are screens where Chris Kondek shows the actors, previously recorded, artificially aged, and also live.) Be sure to come to the Schaubühne for an evening of enjoyable entertainment and the performance of Jule Böwe, who seems to hover above it all. And who, luckily, does perform.

Text: Emma Zylla / Photos: Gianmarco Bresadola

Schaubühne, Kurfürstendamm 153, 10709 Berlin–Charlottenburg; map
Hannah Zabrisky tritt nicht auf 

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