Stückemarkt I

Running Amok My Childrens’ game

Youths from the first post-German unification generation, stifled in their own environments. The first part of “Running amok my childrens’ game” reeks of suffocation. When the author Thomas Freyer, born 1981 in East Germany, raises the curtain, then the matter at stake is not merely the massacre, as it all derives from some other, deeper emotion. Not even the obliteration of an entire school will suffice to get rid of this feeling. In the final seconds the same words that run through the protagonists’ lives recur: “I am afraid. Go on, shoot!”

Lightfree House

In “Lightfree House” the fates of two young “urban bums” and two older neighbours are decided when they come together by chance in a dilapidated Berlin back yard. This biotope comes under threat due to the intervention of a social worker, setting off a process that gives rise to a new, hitherto unknown feeling for the four inhabitants of the tenement – solidarity. Thomas Melle has written a charming study of a milieu, told with humour and intricate characterization. This is a play about the fear of social deprivation, but a play which is a lot of fun to watch.