"Masterpieces" Concert Series

The MEISTERWERKE concert series at Berlin Cathedral showcases cultural life in all its diversity—from grand classical music to literary-musical evenings and club culture. Amid sacred architecture and unique acoustics, unforgettable evenings unfold—impressive, moving, and inspiring.

Since 2015, Ben Becker has been thrilling audiences with “Ich, Judas” at the most beautiful venues across Germany. Every performance to date has been completely sold out. Originally planned as a one-time performance at Berlin Cathedral, the program was expanded into a nationwide, ongoing tour due to its overwhelming success. Over 30 additional performances took place at Berlin Cathedral and Hamburg’s St. Michael’s Church alone.

Now Ben Becker returns with this extraordinary play to the very place where it all began: the stage of the magnificent Berlin Cathedral. The sacred space provides the perfect backdrop for this profound drama and a deeply emotional, unforgettable theatrical experience.

Program Information:

Judas—his name is synonymous with betrayal. His story is one of unforgivable guilt. He is the only enemy for whom there is no love, the most hated, the most persecuted, and the most demonized: Judas, the disciple of Jesus, who betrays the Son of God with a kiss and delivers him to the cross. Ben Becker takes on this role.

The case of Judas must be reopened. A story has been passed down, a verdict handed down, a scapegoat branded for eternity. But the story isn’t true—the verdict is wrong. “What was there to betray?” Judas asks in his defense, “Jesus’ whereabouts? Thousands knew that. His great secret—that he was the Son of God? He said that himself, in front of everyone!” And that is just the beginning of many inconsistencies in a story that has been believed more than it has been questioned.

The image of Judas, the traitor, is a prejudice with the most disastrous consequences: anti-Semitism, persecution of Jews, religious wars. Ben Becker speaks out for the one who was chosen to play the role of the Antichrist in order to make Jesus the Messiah. “Judas is nothing without Jesus … But Jesus is also nothing without Judas,” is the radical insight of Walter Jens, who, in his Judas monologue, shatters the moral certainties of millennia of piety. A monumental task for an actor: Here stands one man against all others in a desperate struggle for belated justice. “I, Judas” is the existential plea for a damned man, the correction of the greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of faith, and the retraction of an error that has divided the world.

With his interpretation of Judas, Ben Becker seeks not only to resist enemy stereotypes, prejudices, and false certainties. He portrays Judas precisely where the questions of faith and doubt, of salvation and damnation, belong: in God’s house. The music and the sacred power of the organ, played by cathedral organist Andreas Sieling, make Ben Becker’s defense of Judas a truly memorable event.

Text: Amos Oz: Judas, Chapter 47 (Suhrkamp Verlag) and Walter Jens: The Defense Speech

of Judas Iscariot (Radius-Verlag)

Direction and staging: Ben Becker

Music: Cathedral Organist Andreas Sieling

Dramaturgy: John von Düffel (Deutsches Theater, Berlin)

A co-production by Ben Becker & MSK Meistersinger

Ben Becker “I, Judas”