A musical theater evening about home in a foreign country by Jörg Thieme and Carola Cohen-Friedlaender
Arthur Gottlein, expelled from his homeland after the annexation of Austria to the German Empire, deprived of his family, friends, his own language, familiar surroundings and job, suddenly has to find his way in a foreign country.
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KEY VISUAL shangHaimat oder Das ungewöhnliche Leben des Arthur Gottlein
Like 20,000 other Jewish refugees, around a quarter of them from Vienna, he finds refuge in the Shanghai free trade zone. He has to immerse himself in a completely different culture and is confronted with unfamiliar climate, food and smells.
Where does he, the stranger who has flown into the country, get the strength to survive? How does he overcome the fear of further persecution, of renewed exclusion? What keeps him going? And finally the question: What hope burns in him that there is a future?
Gottlein answers this question in a charming way. Like his fellow sufferers, he surrounds himself with the familiar in Shanghai. If they create the enclave Little Vienna, where cinemas and theaters, Viennese restaurants and cafés are located on Chusan Road, where you can leaf through Austrian gazettes, the former film pioneer Gottlein finds his very special niche. He founded the Shanghai Marionette Theater and brought his little actors Nestroy and Raimund to China.
The evening takes up Arthur Gottlein's artistic means of expression. Moving images and films and the protagonist's alter ego as a doll take the audience to the stages of an unusual life.
Jörg Thieme (game) | Max Doehlemann (music) | Stefan Bleidorn (equipment) | Carola Cohen-Friedlaender (dramaturgy) | Guests (puppet show)
