Playwright: Marius von Mayenburg
Country: Germany
Title: “Bang”
Playwright: Marius von Mayenburg
Translator: Maja Zade
Director: Warner Crocker
Synopsis: “Bang" is a play about "political emotions. About the irrational desire for explosions and sensations in the political sphere", a biting satire of the "longing for macho men, leaders who provide simple solutions for complex problems". (Marius von Mayenburg)
In a world where everything happens at once – the school parents’ evening, the occupation of the Crimea, the question of whether filter coffee is better than espresso after all, the massacre of civilians in South Sudan, the search for a light-flooded period flat with stucco and the ultimate destruction of our planet by greenhouse gasses – into this world a child is born, a waterbirth, totally natural, a nameless child in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district who sets out to change all our lives once and for all. A young boy, highly-gifted of course, who already in the womb throttles his twin sister to make it crystal clear from the start that nothing, but absolutely nothing will impede his progress to the top. Inexorable, unswerving – neither his father nor mother, neither a teacher nor USA drone warfare will stop him when it comes to putting his mark on a world, our world, which is majorly out of joint. The harder he falls onto the crash mat, the higher he rebounds. And so we witness his swift ascent against the opposition of his besotted parents, against the school and every educational institute unable to cope with his extreme talent, against everything which was there before him and fails to give him unconditional love, against everything that is not on his side and refuses to grant him unlimited power, against the rest of a world which is majorly out of ... but we’ve had that already. We witness his rise but not his fall. Because nothing will stop him. Not even he himself.