RambaZamba Theater – The Devoted, Stubborn and Unruly

One of her farewell productions as director of the Berlin RambaZamba Theater in 2014 was “DADA Divas”. The brilliant conclusion to an era that had begun 25 years earlier, when she and her then husband Klaus Erforth founded a special theater. A theater for her son Moritz, who was born in 1976 with Down syndrome.

Gisela Höhne had just finished her acting studies and saw herself standing on the stage of the German Theater, where Erforth was successfully directing. But now a disabled child, the end of all dreams? In her memoirs, “Then with RambaZamba,” which have now been published, we find out how she felt at the time: “I really want to continue doing theater and I’m not ready for a life as Mother Theresa.”

So what to do? Give Moritz to a home and her life continues as if nothing had happened? The temptation is there: if it didn’t matter who looked after him, she would have. But she quickly realizes: It doesn’t matter. Moritz is affectionate, but remains very slow. He needs a lot more time for everything there is to learn.

It is her time that she is now sacrificing for her child. Her friends from the theater, she remembers, gradually all started to leave because they couldn’t stand lying on the carpet for hours and waiting with all their attention until Moritz had moved a building block from one side to the other. But she doesn’t just endure it, she lives closely with Moritz to this day, knows his life, his special rhythm – and now Moritz has been a pillar of the ensemble for over 30 years.

He has learned to speak so well that he can stand on stage, to move to music, and to play various instruments. Everything that children with Down syndrome supposedly never learn can be done here. It is the result of care, patience and joint projects. Some call it a miracle, but Gisela Höhne has this “talent for people,” as Chekhov would say: she is demanding in a friendly but persistent way.

She never gave up her own claim to happiness. After Klaus Erforth, from whom she finally separated, new loves came, both men and women. No, she didn’t become a mother Theresa. She earned a doctorate in theater studies, ran the RambaZamba Theater, which her son Jacob took over ten years ago, “a radical change” that also had painful sides for her.

But after a break of several years, in 2023 she staged again at her old house: “Doña Rosita remains single” by García Lorca, a piece that only appears to be out of time, as she emphasizes. She knows: »Happiness cannot be programmed. There is no right to it, but it is where we do not expect it, where we let ourselves in.«

What is the secret of your success as a director and theater manager? DADA divas showed it: She loves everyone with whom she creates something together. It takes as long as it takes. Six weeks of rehearsal and then premiere? Sometimes their rehearsals lasted almost a year. Moritz was the measure of time.

Like him, everything here took a little longer, but then it became particularly good: from “Mongopolis” (2003) to “The Good Person from Downtown” (2014). They never had any problems playing with their own limitations here. We have our disabilities, others have theirs. Let everyone benefit from it as best they can! What makes some people sad here is something else. Today, hardly any children are born with Down syndrome because the hereditary disease can be diagnosed early. Are we going to die out? Moritz isn’t the only one wondering.

“DADA Divas” was a highly avant-garde, almost philosophical production. The ensemble was able to perform the most difficult texts from Daniil Charms to Kurt Schwitters and Ernst Jandl because everyone had so much fun. Playing with the absurd is nothing abstract; it begins with individual letters and sounds and then suddenly rises to the mortal somersault of the calculable. Suddenly this becomes scary: “It’s about to begin. It begins. It has begun.” And then you lean back comfortably in your seat. So now! And then seamlessly: “It will end. It ends. It’s over.” If you’re not careful, life is already over when you still think it’s starting. And if you pay close attention? Then too, but there can still be, as Gottfried Benn says, “short-exposed signs”.

Höhne knows from living closely with her son Moritz that abstract approaches work even less for the RambaZamba ensemble than usual. It must be a feast for the senses! So their productions always have something of the circus, but one with philosophical demands.

It was Heiner Müller who, when the Sonnenuhr sponsoring association was founded in 1992, including an art workshop and stage, donated a considerable sum and wrote about it in 1994: “In a world in which daily speed is determined by computers, perception is primarily via electronic media realized, SONNENUHR’s work relies on archaic statements by individuals. The fact that they are different is a quality in the age of leveling.«

Gisela Höhne’s very personal memories, which deal with ups and downs, not only in the theater, are carried by an astonishing cheerfulness. You read it and think: How difficult a lot of things must have been and then you learn how everything difficult can be endured if you bear it with joy.

Of course, a theater for the disabled (to use this unpleasant word) is extremely strenuous. Because anyone who is disabled, regardless of what they may be, often has a strong will. And that’s a good thing. But the many strong individual wills, who often don’t want what they should (sometimes with good reason), have to be persuaded again and again to go beyond boundaries together in order to create something that is strong and new. Become whole! Gisela Höhne repeatedly made this utopia a reality. There was – and is – a lot of seduction involved, it seems to me.

Seduction? The art of getting involved in something that is different than you expect. In the book she reminds us of the many actors and actresses who shaped RambaZamba. I can also see them in front of me, most of them are still there today. A photo section that Sibylle Bergemann created a number of years ago shows the shimmering atmosphere at RambaZamba.

Above all, there are the strong women around Nele Winkler, Franziska Kleinert, Juliane Götze and Zora Schemm, whose presence fascinated me from the start. But Jonas Sippel, about whom Höhne, in her own way of making loud declarations of love, also noted: “The small, slim man with Down syndrome, agile and always on the move, is again one of the special actors, so completely different Moritz, but just as intense: hypermotoric, inquisitive, always on the topic (antique or German legends).«

Who, if characterized in this way by their director, wouldn’t give their all in the game? And that’s what they do, as dedicated as they are stubborn, sometimes even stubborn.

Gisela Höhne: Then with RambaZamba. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 352 pages, br., 24 €.
The book presentation with Gisela Höhne will take place at the Berlin Pfefferberg Theater on January 23rd at 8 p.m.