CRAZY BLOOD

The current debate on Islam is a fertile breeding ground for all the carefully nurtured clichés: for example, that young men, usually with a migrant or Muslim background and poorly educated, force their wives to wear headscarfs, and murder their sisters in the name of family honour if they disobey their strict religious code. The only thing that can save them is education! In this play, one of the teachers on whom the nation has pinned its dying hopes is unexpectedly provided with a golden opportunity: one day, while trying to teach a class of unruly pupils from migrant families about Friedrich Schiller and his idealistic views on classical German theatre, a scuffle breaks out, in the course of which a gun lands in her hand – a real gun...

Along with minarets, young men with a background have become the scourge of German society in the daily fight to preserve Western civilization. That background is usually a migrant one, or a Muslim one or one removed from education. Sometimes these fears are driven by roots, which will be Turkish or Arab because these men force their wives to wear headscarves and murder their sisters for reasons of family honour while the State denies them any means of subsistence for refusing to integrate while instead of working they stay at home and conceive new girls with headscarves.

So much for the prevailing clichés of the current debate about Islam. The only chance of solving this problem rests with Germany’s schools: education, education, education!

One day one of the teachers on whom the nation is pinning its final hopes is presented with an unusual opportunity: she is busy attempting to make one of the classics of Western theatre accessible to these surly, ill-disciplined pupils with migrant backgrounds when a gun falls into her hands in a scuffle, a real gun. She hesitates for a moment and then takes her class hostage and forces them at gunpoint to get up on the school stage and perform. This hostage-taking not only unleashes an exuberant combination of genres, from thriller to comedy and melodrama, it also cheerfully deconstructs a set of apparently clear identities.

A co-production between the Ruhrtriennale and the Ballhaus Naunystraße Berlin, Germany’s unique post-migrant theatre. Directed by Nurkan Erpulat, stage and costume design: Magda Willi, lighting design Hans Leser, conductor Tobias Schwencke, dramaturgy Jens Hillje; with Hassan Akkouch, Tamer Arslan, Murat Dikenci, Pınar Erincin, Adrian Saidi, Sesede Terziyan, Paul Wollin.

"Bitterly cruel theatre about good people, if there can be such a thing: a German teacher gets carried away on the spur of the moment and brings a load of Turkish kids who don’t want to integrate closer to Schiller by holding a gun to their heads. The perfect answer to the youth court judge Kirsten Heisig with Uma Thurman, who does not disagree with Sarrazin yet manages to make him look like what he is – the chief accountant of hysteria about foreigners. The plot always has a new surprise up its sleeve with which to undermine the clichés which have just blossomed into full authenticity. The collaboration of Jens Hillje and his experience with well-made-plays ever since ‘Baracke’ times is clearly evident. And the acting company at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße are amazing: precise performances with a rich knowledge of the milieu, above all from Sesede Terziyan as the teacher drunk on absolute power, shooting her learning objectives from the hip. Terroristic educational theatre that’s not afraid of contradiction and therefore doesn’t lie to anyone." (Franz Wille)