Note: this feature contains references to abortion.
Hardly anyone has written as clearly about unwanted pregnancy as the French author Annie Ernaux: in her autobiographical novel Happening (“Das Ereignis”) the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature looks back to 1963, when abortion in France was still illegal. At that time, a young Annie becomes pregnant and realizes quickly that she will not be able to keep the child. She is the first from her working class family to make it to university, in Rouen. She is about to graduate and is certain that if she were to become a mother, her career would stall. Sober, frank and without self-pity, Ernaux recalls a time of doubt and searching. It is a journey that takes her from a “cowardly” doctor to a medic (an “angel”) who is willing to perform an abortion illegally. Ultimately, she ends up in a hospital emergency department. Now Laura Linnenbaum and Amely Joana Haag have adapted the story for the Berliner Ensemble. The production sees three actors – Nina Bruns, Pauline Knof and Kathrin Wehlisch – playing the part of Annie. Each portrays her in a different phase of her life: first as a young student, then as a woman living through an abortion and finally as an author who puts the experience to paper.
The three performances bolster each other. When one falters, another continues the script; they propel and animate each other to keep going. As unembellished as Ernaux’s writing is, the imagery the production devises for her inner turmoil is striking: under strobelights, the three women spread bags of dirt on the polished stage. They roll around in the mess and gradually dismantle the set, only to sweep everything clean again at the end and fix their hair as if nothing had happened. Annie’s isolation as she struggles against the indifference of the world is shown most strikingly in the quiet moments – especially when the three actresses join together to become the whole person. A brief add-on in the play – which otherwise remains close to the book – reminds us that in Germany abortions are not legal, but merely decriminalized. This legal insecurity was underscored when, last summer, the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortion, shelving the Roe v. Wade ruling. These developments bring home just how shaky the right to female self-determination is, and just how important Ernaux’s narrative remains.
Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: JR Berliner Ensemble
Berliner Ensemble, Bertolt-Brecht-Platz 1, 10117 Berlin–Mitte; map
Happening (“Das Ereignis”) showing 13 & 14.03.2023 (sold out – box office tickets may be available) and 27 & 28.04.
