Willi Kufalt calls for freedom. After five years in prison, his release is imminent. He wants a decent life, a clean start and a little happiness: work, family, maybe a movie. The reality of the Weimar Republic stands in the way of his modest wish: chaos, crisis, inflation and mass unemployment.

He optimistically pursues his longing for social advancement. He is hired as an address writer in a home for ex-convicts, but the Christian welfare system turns out to be an exploitative machine. It is better to start his own business with a group of like-minded people and set up his own typing pool. But the overpowering competition puts them down. So they continue as advertisers and are successful. Even a wedding is on the cards and with it the longed-for entry into middle-class life.

But the stigma of the ex-convict sticks to him like tough luck. Wrongly accused of theft, his past is revealed and he loses everything: work, family and any hope of a righteous life.

Resigned, he heads for the Hamburg underworld and breathes a sigh of relief: At last the desperate toil is over, the trembling at the limits of decency. The system that lives from the exploitation of the weakest dictates the law of the strongest. Kufalt turns the violence he experiences every day on a small scale outwards with an iron fist, wanting to kick instead of being kicked. He tries his luck one last time and ends up where his story began: in a prison cell.

Hans Fallada, one of the great storytellers of the early 20th century, knows what he is writing about. He himself was an inmate in prisons and psychiatric institutions several times and led a life between global success and the abyss, constant production and self-destruction. In his experience, the difficulty of reintegrating former prisoners begins while they are still in prison and the cycle of paternalism, exploitation and stigmatization on the outside undermines any attempt to strive for self-determination and social recognition.

Willi Kufalt's fate is moving because it describes a frustrating defeat of good intentions. A slowly despairing man between turmoil and resignation, tossed back and forth between the restlessness of the times and the rumbling of his own thoughts. For him, there is no pause, nowhere. His stigma becomes his downfall, the prison in his own head a trap.

Together with the ensemble of the Berlin juvenile detention center, aufBruch traverses the possibilities of social advancement offered to Kufalt in a society that promises equal opportunities on paper but fails to deliver in reality.

Performed by the aufBruch prisoner ensemble in the JSA Berlin:
Baker, Elias, George, Gustavo de Costa, Jamal, Justin H., Mirco, Patrick, Tim-Noah.

Director Peter Atanassow Stage design Holger Syrbe Costume design Anne Schartmann Dramaturgy Franziska Kuhn Rap development and coaching Aisha Madarati Musical coach Vsevolod Silkin Video Pascal Rehnolt Production management Sibylle Arndt Assistant director Nina Flemming Production assistant Franziska Judith Hildebrandt Technician Lukas Maser Graphic design Dirk Trageser

Tickets: 15 € / 10 € (ermäßigt)

Kartenverkauf ab Montag, 26. Februar 2024 um 11 Uhr

im aufBruch-Onlineshop  

oder an der Kasse der Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz

Hinweis:
Der Besuch der Vorstellung ist regulär ab einem Alter von 18 Jahren erlaubt, ab einem Alter von 16 Jahren nur nach Vorlage einer schriftlichen Einverständniserklärung der Erziehungsberechtigten.

Funded by the Senate Department for Justice and Consumer Protection.
Supported by JSA Berlin, JVA Tegel, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.