DDR / ÞaÐ sem eR
- Year
- 2023
- Type
- Theatre
- Role
- Renata
- Director
- Ólafur Egill Ólafsson
DDR (Det Der eR – That Which Is) 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.
Reviews
„The staging is as raw as it can be. The actor sits on a chair on a platform fitted with spotlights that take turns lighting her face. In this sincere production, the text and María Ellingsen’s extraordinary emotional sensitivity come fully into their own. … This minimalism and closeness to the performer create closeness to the work and the story. It is almost unbelievable that in a piece where the actor never stands up, barely moves in front of a handful of spectators, I hung on every single word and saw memories come alive in the descriptions in Renata’s letters, so that the events stood vividly before my eyes. The feelings María lends the words through the finest nuances of her voice are magnificent. Her delicate movements as she sits mesmerise the audience and allow them to go deeper into the work and into Renata’s inner world.“