The Silence

Venue: Globe - For his autofictional play” The Silence “, author and theatre director Falk Richter goes back to his own family history. His father died without a conciliatory discussion with his son being able to take place. In dialogue with his mother, he focuses on unspoken truths, repressed secrets and unresolved traumas that have not left him alone to this day. How are the atrocities experienced by his father during the war inscribed in his parents' family history and marriage, such as the trauma of the mother's expulsion and flight from West Prussia? What was concealed in the family for years? How did the author and his sister grow up in the post-war West German province, and how was the family constructed? How was the author's gay identity, which was already emerging as a teenager, suppressed and fought against by parents? How was he reacted to homophobic hostility he experienced? How do trauma, silence, and violent suppression continue in the author's own relationships? The conflict between mother and son becomes a journey into the abysses of West German bourgeois society from the post-war period to the present day. But how reliable is one's own memory, how credible is the mother's life story? And couldn't everything have been completely different? Autobiographical things soon mix with fictitious things, contradict memories and open up possibilities for other realities. In playing with autobiography and fiction, in the contradictions of one's own story, hope also germinates: What other models of masculinity, and therefore other types of fatherhood and parenthood, are possible? What forms of relationships exist beyond patriarchal oppression and violence? What could a completely different life look like?

Falk Richter was born in Hamburg in 1969 and worked as an author and theatre maker at the Schaubühne for many years. Since then, he has directed at numerous German-language and international theaters and was named Director of the Year (Theater heute) in 2018 for his production “Am Königsweg”. Since the 2023/24 season, he has been working regularly at the Schaubühne again. In 2024, Richter was elevated to the rank of “Officier des Arts et des Lettres” by the French government and invited again to the Mülheimer Theatertage and Theatertreffen as well as awarded the Friedrich-Luft Prize 2024 for the best Berlin or Potsdam theatre performance. The actor Dimitrij Schaad receives several awards for his role as “Falk Richter” in Richter's autofictional production “The Silence”, including as “Actor of the Year 2024” (Theatre today) and with the “Gordana-Kosanović Actress Award” as part of the Mülheimer Theatertage 2024.