A bit of light. And that peace.

“The evening before I invaded the occupied territories, I saw a speech on television from the government and military leadership. They have decided that we contribute even more to GDP if we consume not only vacuum robots but cruise missiles on the battlefield. Where we slaughter ourselves for land, mineral resources, power, borders. stuff.”

Sibylle Berg's new piece is set in a future that feels unsettlingly like our present. When war breaks out in Europe between Liechtenstein and Luxembourg and is mobilized, it slowly dawns on even an engineer drafted into military service: Perhaps his own queerness could never be reconciled with his job in the arms industry. Somewhere in protection from the next detonations, he starts researching: the texture of thought that our world should be. Sibylle Berg's text is a delicate monologue about the despair of our present — a present whose discourses rotate infinitely like an idle motor — and about the fear of recurring militarization tendencies in our society. Inspired by the photography “Fieldwork” by Canadian artist Jeff Wall, Sibylle Berg takes a seat at the breaking edge of our era. With music. And a bit of silence.

With “A little light. And this peace.” After “RCE” and “Es kann doch nur noch besser werden”, the third text by Sibylle Berg is already being performed by the Berliner Ensemble. The young director Dennis Nolden — assistant director at the Berliner Ensemble until the 2024/25 season — stages Sibylle Berg's monologue as a solo with Gabriel Schneider.