Berliner Ensemble: “Pick me Girls”: Venus from Schiffbauerdamm

The solo evening is currently experiencing a small renaissance on the stages, about which there is a lot to be said and certainly a lot to be praised or criticized. But the most important and decisive thing about this development is often something very simple: someone up there on the stage is prominent.

Because a large part of the audience is simply interested in everything that happens if they only know the person playing from television. More people would only disrupt this fascination. At the Berliner Ensemble, for example, they have had a completely uninspired Max Frisch adaptation in their program for almost three years now, but in which Matthias Brandt embodies all the roles, which is obviously enough.

Now another evening is being added to the repertoire, which, if the star’s schedule allows it, will certainly ensure a few dozen sold-out performances. In any case, the premiere audience cheered Sophie Passmann euphorically, including applause and standing ovations.

But unlike Brandt, one has to say: She completely deserves it, because the show that Passmann created together with director Christina Tscharyiski is impeccable and both emotionally and politically demanding comedy. Passmann has been one of the most successful young women in the media industry for several years. She has had widely-reaching columns, presented on the radio, been on television and written a few very successful books.

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A lot of what she does is about feminist issues. This is also the case in her last bestseller, in which she uses biographical insights to characterize a type of woman: those “Pick me Girls” who enhance themselves by devaluing their peers. Why are they doing this? According to Passmann, the reason is that, due to their socialization, they always want to please men and need their attention. The patriarchy is set up in such a way that not only men but also women judge femininity unfavorably.

Passmann explains the topic using a version of “Pick Me Girls” that she edited herself in a mixture of infotainment, small scenes and confessions. In front of a glittering curtain and next to a huge open shell, like Venus from Schiffbauerdamm, she talks about life as an overweight teenager, about her eating disorder and her self-doubt. She tells the anecdote, which is very popular in her family, about how she was too fat to wear onesie in the hospital when she was born (“Giant baby! There was no other topic in the city back then!”), and recites mean things that her ex-boyfriends said to her and which she simply swallowed at the time and blamed herself.

Some things seem a bit cliché here: the woman is the victim, always wants a relationship and closeness, while the man seeks distance and is also an asshole. But it doesn’t matter because Passmann is still far from Mario Barth humor even in the simpler passages, but above all because she spares herself the least. Rather, she offers herself as a deterrent example: If she highlights her own misjudgments about her body, the world of men, but above all other women and makes fun of herself, then it does not fail to have an effect.

“I constantly look at myself and think: What a shame.” Passmann’s stage ego mourns the woman she didn’t become because she preferred to work on a version of herself that would be better received by men. “Total waste. How lonely,” she sighs, representative of the predominantly female audience, who will tear them from their seats a short time later. Popular feminism can also be theater, as this one and a half hour evening shows, which can certainly be mentioned in the same breath as recent hits of autofictional drama such as “Who Killed My Father?” by and with Édouard Louis or “The Silence” by Falk Richter .

Next performances: November 3rd, 20th and 1.12.

www.berliner-ensemble.de