Das schwarze Wasser (UA) at Nationaltheater Mannheim

It is a magical night on the "black waters full of stars." For a short moment, a group of youths are able to overcome all of society's differences and contrasts. Drunk with love and high-spirited, they "travel into the heavens." But the reality has disappointed their hopes: the youths from long ago meet again in the present day, where in parallel worlds the mutual prejudices has been cemented solidly.

"He meets her accidentally on the street. She suddenly begins to cry, and he asks her if he can help her, after all they do know each other from earlier. Friends from the past - and in the past everything was unimportant: the background, where you were from, the money, the school, the parents. Today one of them is a minister, another sells cars, and another sits at the supermarket check-out. The city is big enough but sometimes their paths still cross.
It starts raining and he brings the crying woman to her apartment, the apartment in which her parents also lived. And later his wife asks him: everything alright? Yes, he says, but from this day on nothing is the same again, nothing." (R. Sch.)

The author masterfully interweaves the past with the future. His melancholic and poetic views conjure up the innocence of our first great loves and the utopian ideal of mutual understanding across social barriers.



Roland Schimmelpfennig is "the leading German playwright" (FR). He has written commissions for the Schauspielhaus Zürich, the Deutsche Theater Berlin, the Schauspielhaus Bochum, the Vienna Burgtheater among others. In 2010 he received the Mülheim Playwrights Prize for his piece Der goldene Drache (The Golden Dragon).