Nach Mitternacht (After Midnight)
based on the novel by Irmgard Keun, stage adaptation by Cosmea Spellekenbased on the novel by Irmgard Keun, stage adaptation by Cosmea Spelleken
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«After Midnight» tells the story of two days in 1936. Nineteen-year-old Sanna takes refuge with her brother Algin, a blacklisted author. In between the parties, cafes and bars she begins to recognise that the world she lives in has been increasingly taken over by ideology. Keun’s novel from exile is a haunting depiction of daily life under fascism – her second international success after «The Artificial Silk Girl».
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«After Midnight» tells the story of two days in 1936. During this brief period, a new reality crystallises for nineteen-year-old Sanna in which denunciation becomes a social currency and violence is normalised. The young protagonist must leave her lover Franz behind and take refuge with her brother Algin, once a celebrated writer of the Weimar Republic, whose books have now been blacklisted. In Algin’s luxurious apartment, she encounters a society which, in between lavish parties, visits to cafes and intellectual discussions, can only distance itself from the rising horror on a superficial level. Sanna begins to understand the extent to which ideology has permeated every aspect of the world she lives in – such as her friend Gerti’s love affair with the Jew Dieter Aaron, broken off in the face of the racial laws, or her being denounced by her own aunt, who reports her to the Gestapo for criticising Nazi propaganda. Daily life is increasingly dominated by fear, surveillance and opportunism. When Franz is forced to escape, Sanna also makes a decision: she will accompany him, come what may. They will start a different life after midnight.
Irmgard Keun published «After Midnight» in exile in 1937. However, the main sections of the novel were written in Nazi Germany – which gives them a real sense of immediacy. Here the author creates the image of a young woman who is looking for her own role in a deeply contradictory society – in between conformism and rebellion. Keun’s characters are neither heroes nor monsters, they are people we are familiar with, from our families, friendship circles, offices and pubs. They become allies of the regime or the resistance not from conviction, but simply because they want to live their lives.
In her debut production at the Residenztheater, Cosmea Spelleken, whose works occupy the intersection of film, theatre and media arts, stages Keun’s powerful depiction of «German reality» in the Nazi state. Klaus Mann wrote of Keun’s novel in 1937: «A shudder runs down our backs … it is woeful, disgraceful and intolerable that this is what reality looks like.»
