from Yoram Kaniuk and Kerem Hillel
Out of the night rain, a stranger appears. It is Kurt, an Israeli chicken farmer returning to Germany, to the very house where he was given refuge as a Gestapo prisoner and in return was to father a child for an infertile German man. Now he steps back across the threshold of that former life, driven by the hope of finding the child he has never known.
Image gallery
KUKURÍKU
KUKURÍKU
KUKURÍKU
The only play ever written by the Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk (1930–2013) was recently discovered in his estate and now receives its world premiere at TD Berlin. Kerem Hillel's direction and Meittam Govreen's music bring to life a poetic, associative mask-theatre work about the desire for renewal between cultures and entrenched national relationships.
"What do you not remember when you are remembering?"
This probing question threads the play together, linking the present with the past. Is it about right and wrong - or more about how we live with what has been? Do we repress it, hold on to it, or dare to retell the past until we finally find ourselves within it?
Fri, Dec 12, 6:30 PM
Panel "Memory Revisited – Yoram Kaniuk and the Dimensions of German–Israeli Cultural Exchange" directly before the performance. With Prof. Adia Mendelson-Maoz, Dr. Tom Kellner (Mod.), Dr. Sebastian Schirrmeister, Dr. Alexandra Nocke and Prof. Joachim Schlör - in English.
Free admission, please register in advance at tickets@td.berlin
IN ENGLISH
Additional information
Cast Carlo Duer / Enikö Maria Szász / Lilith Maxion Director Kerem Hillel Composer Meittam Govreen Costume Design Samira Schneck
Stage Design Sarah Wolters Lighting Design Trung Tran Assistant Director Paul Paatz Supported by the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin / Szloma-Albam Stiftung / Cultural Department of the Israeli Embassy.
Kerem Hillel studied Music Theatre Directing at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. During his studies he staged productions at venues such as Theater Delphi, TD Berlin, TuD, Brotfabrik, and Theaterforum Kreuzberg. Further music theatre projects have been created in Darmstadt, Hanover, Bayreuth, Tel Aviv, and Bautzen. In his search for new theatrical forms, he creates an immediate closeness to what unfolds on stage — a direct, poetic theatre.
Yoram Kaniuk (1930–2013) was born in Tel Aviv and was a writer, painter, and journalist. His encounters with Holocaust survivors marked him deeply, as did the German culture in which his father was rooted. His work explores memory, trauma, and identity — themes that resonate most strongly through his seventeen novels, which have been translated into dozens of languages. In Germany, he became well known through "Adam Resurrected" and "The Last Berliner". KUKURÍKU (or "The Wedding of the Dead Brothers") is his only play.
Stage Design Sarah Wolters Lighting Design Trung Tran Assistant Director Paul Paatz Supported by the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin / Szloma-Albam Stiftung / Cultural Department of the Israeli Embassy.
Kerem Hillel studied Music Theatre Directing at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. During his studies he staged productions at venues such as Theater Delphi, TD Berlin, TuD, Brotfabrik, and Theaterforum Kreuzberg. Further music theatre projects have been created in Darmstadt, Hanover, Bayreuth, Tel Aviv, and Bautzen. In his search for new theatrical forms, he creates an immediate closeness to what unfolds on stage — a direct, poetic theatre.
Yoram Kaniuk (1930–2013) was born in Tel Aviv and was a writer, painter, and journalist. His encounters with Holocaust survivors marked him deeply, as did the German culture in which his father was rooted. His work explores memory, trauma, and identity — themes that resonate most strongly through his seventeen novels, which have been translated into dozens of languages. In Germany, he became well known through "Adam Resurrected" and "The Last Berliner". KUKURÍKU (or "The Wedding of the Dead Brothers") is his only play.
Dates
December 2025
| Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa | Su |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
14
|
15
|
16
|
17
|
18
|
19
|
20
|
21
|
22
|
23
|
24
|
25
|
26
|
27
|
28
|
29
|
30
|
31
|
