Ernte (Harvest)

“for ten years mama has been coming here to work on this farm and – how lucky – she can even bring the children here – as long as they behave – since then she’s brought us in the holidays and forces me on my birthday to eat the cake the mother farmer bakes specially for me and brings to our container because she won’t have any poles in the house unless they’re cleaning and then she comes with her old plates because she won’t eat off our dirty ones [thank you how funny that the dog is indoors licking the cake off my plate haha (…) yes funny as long as mama doesn’t bring any men home or get pregnant and never come back while poor karl never sets eyes on any woman here except his mother and she (…) makes damned sure that no eastern whore is going to get her son and his house]”

Everyone is left to their fate from now on. Plans no longer apply. Desires have to help us through the arid times of loneliness and the long nights. Even when someone wishes to accept matters, there’s nothing to be done. Disaffected lives are once again in the spotlight due to economic migration. Claudia Grehn describes the local characters’ bitter struggle against decline and how those in decline prevent the newcomers from improving their lot. How the tiny scraps of language used by the locals and newcomers are never adequate to describe their inner lives. How wounds can never be spoken of and only the pain remains. How no language can describe the partings and everyone therefore has to stay away. This text communicates a realistic desperation. A desperation which demands that the theatre dresses this pain in characters and creates a space on stage for this unspeakable longing for some kind of meaning.
Marlene Streeruwitz

Claudia Grehn was born in Wiesbaden in 1982 and studied Russian and Philosophy in Hamburg, Rostock and Berlin. In 2005 she began studying Creative Writing for the Stage at the University of the Arts Berlin. She translated Yuri Klavdiev’s play “Let’s Go, The Car’s Waiting” for the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin. In 2007 she won the Kleist Prize for an emerging writer for her play “Heimlich Bestialisch – I can’t wait to love in heaven”, which was premiered in 2008 at the Landestheater Tübingen.