Brecht Festival Augsburg – Big spirits in the meat grinder

In the hustle and bustle between swirling skirts and embroidered traditional costumes, you always catch a look at Brecht. The hand puppet draws with relish on its cigar and comments on the folk dance that takes place in the power club, which was set up in a former textile factory especially for the Brecht Festival of the City of Augsburg. During the 48-hour dance marathon in the disused furniture hall, eight cultural associations lead traditional dances such as the Assyrian Bagiye or the Greek Sirtos. In between, the figure theater collective orchestrates the Helmi imposing shows, plays Dadaistic dialogues and dances with the audience to the “Morite of Mackie Messer”. The three -day folk spectacle at the end of the Brecht Festival is all about Julian Warner’s update of Brecht’s “Great Method”, which runs through its work as “practical teaching” for dialectical thinking.

Since 2023 the festival manager has been trying to revive Undogmatically in Augsburg and to invent new, popular forms such as wrestling matches and gymnastics festivals. While the city’s diverse communities in Brecht’s Kraftklub can get a stage and make new alliances, the festival also addresses (post-) migrant audience with the staging shown. Flyed from Istanbul, the staging “Josef K.” by director Serdar Biliş filled the 600 places of the venue in Martinipark mainly with Turkish-speaking people. These were always able to laugh on stage a few seconds before the German overtunes behind the rapid stroke.

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In contemporary setting, the main character, based on Kafka’s “the process”, is ramified by the arbitrariness of the bureaucracy until it becomes a conspiracy theorist. Driven by misunderstandings and frivolous jokes, the accusation that someone is gay is also used as a punchline, which is reminiscent of the tone of homophobic buddy comedies.

The staging “Your work hates you because it does not need you” also leads to the crazy of the Brecht Festival, which will continue to be shown in the program of the Augsburg Theater because it does not need you “because it does not need you. Behind the bulky title hides an equally craved staging with bizarre figure cabinet. The human types of platform capitalism come together and present their worldviews on silver platform: The exaggerated individualism of the esoteric landlord Nelleke meets the fascist philosophers Nick, who wants to keep an eye on the big picture. Her relapse to magical thinking forms the reactionary counterpart to the progress-driven natural and human control of the former Marxist accelerationist.

Hanna Eichel and Kai Windhövel provide a successful portrait (anti) modern ideologies in cooperation. Between right -wing gesture battles, Pershone and Lars, played by Christina Jung and Jannis Roth, try to work in Kafkaesk. Both know that in a shop where bosses are now called coaches, no fulfillment is waiting. As long as they are not transformed into a cloud zombie by the Tech-Kakerlake in the stairwell, their day has succeeded. The armored insect, an invention of the fascist, moves through the mysterious company and projects a non -tasting data stream to the walls. Whoever meets her threatens to become part of the swarm. Only the intellect that Brecht’s spirit lives and has to be eliminated is dangerous.

In this ghost, which is finally torn by the cloud zombies, the little hope resonates that the critical intellectual multinational tech company can still be dangerous. In contrast to the dance marathon, which brings society together in its diversity, this update of the “big method” tries to be complex criticism of the relationships. The staging of André Brücker, the director of the State Theater Augsburg, “teaches questions that enable action” by letting known types collide. It remains to be seen whether the brecht that has just been rumored by the new management team, which will take over the festival from next year, can be put together and resuscitated.