DDR (That Which Is) premieres

DDR (That Which Is) premiered today, 20 January, at Tjarnarbíó.

DDR (Det Der eR) is a monologue by the Danish writer Peter Asmussen, based on his 2012 novel of the same name. It is set in Berlin during the Cold War, when the ideological divide between East and West was at its height and the Berlin Wall split the city in two. The narrator is a young German woman, Renata, who lives in East Berlin in the 1980s with her husband and two children. On the surface her life seems calm, but gradually it emerges that not everything is as it seems; beneath lie secrets, sorrows, hidden longings and desires. The text consists of letters Renata writes to her secret lover in Copenhagen, the Dane Tom, whom she has met only once. In a totalitarian state where spying, surveillance and duplicity are part of daily life, where is there room for humanity and true feeling?

DDR is a story of love, betrayal, longing, self-deception, hope, desire and everything in between – of the walls that surround us, the yearning for freedom and the search for what is, and what is not.