Leo Gmelch

«Agnes Bernauer», first performed in the GDR in 1977, starts like a stop-motion fairy tale: after the death of her mother, Agnes is sent out to work by her bankrupt father. But she is unable to believe that she will find a profession that «gives her pleasure», and decides to marry money. Her rise in society happens quickly: Agnes becomes pregnant and takes Albrecht as a husband: a squeamish only child and mother’s boy who is pampered in the golden cage of the Werdenfels’ family business.

In her new work, the director Claudia Bauer, who has been invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen four times and is renowned for her work with fast and furious acting ensembles, now tackles someone who typifies Munich, the brilliant comedian Karl Valentin. In her usual, opulent stage language she will devise a homage to the Bavarian whose anarchic approach to language led the critic Alfred Kerr to invent the term «Wortzerklauberer», someone who steals words and tears them to pieces.