Christine Umpfenbach’s “Judgments (Revisited)” at the Residenztheater Munich – Culture
At the end you can see the murdered man’s brother in the video. Gavriil Voulgaridis would have liked to have played in this too, but since this is now part of the repertoire of the Munich Residenztheater and the many play dates can hardly be merged with the life of a non-actor, this makeshift, recorded a few weeks ago. Voulgaridis tells of his impression of the outcome of the NSU trial, of the fact that they, the relatives of the victims, had been promised complete clarification and that so much was still open that: “We just want to live here in peace.”
Between 2000 and 2007, the NSU murdered ten people in Germany, and in 2011 two of the trio of criminals were blown up in their mobile homes. At the latest then it became obvious what the authorities, investigators, the judiciary and the police do not want to admit for a long time: that there was a series of racist and neo-Nazi motivated murders in Germany. In 2014, the director Christine Umpfenbach was one of the first to react to this and brought out her play “Judgments” in the royal stables of the Residenztheater, written and researched by her and Azar Mortazavi. It was a play about the victims, their families, friends, relatives.
The director built trust among the bereaved
On July 11, 2018, the NSU trial at the Munich Higher Regional Court ends after 438 days. A judgment has been made, but little has been dealt with. Reason for Christine Umpfenbach to revise her piece. “Judgments (revisited) – After the trial” is based on three quarters of the material from 2014, emerged in many conversations with the bereaved, in which Umpfenbach carefully built up the trust that they had lost after their experience with police interrogations and sensation-hungry reporters. A quarter is new, reflects the process and the consequences. The disappointment of the lawyers, the brother, the widow’s friend.
“Judgments (revisited)” is a perfect report, which fits into the staging of the Marstallbühne and illuminates many aspects. Its world premiere is part of a broader context, the festival “Keinschlussstrich”, which takes place from October 21st to November 7th in 15 German cities. In all the cities in which the NSU murdered, in which it constituted itself and later went into hiding. Especially in those where the victims lived. Jonas Zipf, who came to Theaterhaus Jena in 2011 and has been the city’s head of culture since 2015, who, before taking office, made it clear to the city where the core trio of the NSU was born that there would certainly be an NSU project during his term of office, gave the impetus. 18 institutions in 15 cities joined forces, founded a sponsoring association and received federal funds.
One thing unites the theaters: They focus on the victims
The festival is too diverse to even begin to reproduce the program here. One thing unites the many houses, the majority of which are new productions: the focus is on the victims. And the many questions that die after the verdict are still open. Two projects summarize the individual locations: the exhibition “Open Process”, which can be seen in all future cities, and the oratorio “Manifest (o)”, a modular composition in seven parts, of which individual performances take place in all 15 cities and three integral performances in Jena and Nuremberg, in which the parts from other cities not selected live are switched on via video. The German-Turkish recruitment agreement for guest workers was passed 60 years ago, and the NSU was exposed ten years ago. That shows the whole ambivalence of the anniversaries, which gave rise to the timing of “No line!” form now.
On August 29, 2001, Habil Kiliç was shot in his grocery store on Bad-Schachener-Strasse in Munich-Ramersdorf. On June 15, 2005, the perpetrators of the NSU executed Theodoros Boulgarides at the bar at the newly opened locksmith’s in Trappentreustraße in Munich’s Westend. Umpfenbach does not hide the other eight victims, but their performance revolves around Boulgarides and Kiliç, their friends, relatives and colleagues. Three members of the ensemble, Myriam Schröder, Delschad Numan Khorschid and Thomas Reisinger are Umpfenbach’s representatives for the many characters whose words they reproduce. Your game openly, there are, with a few costume pieces, small adaptations that ultimately only increase the plasticity; the three do not become the characters they represent here on stage, they stand for them.
A little dark string music by Azhar Naim Kamal separates the scenes, nothing more is needed to suggest the character of a requiem. Above the play area, two photos of the streets in which deaths took place alternate, everyday scenes, sometimes coarse-grained, sometimes incorrectly exposed, quickly no color, but a strange shimmering, as if a ghost were pulling through.
A tableau is created, a relief that you think you can grasp with your hands. The endless, recurring interrogations, her husband had a lover, life insurance, and he sold drugs. Murder investigations certainly always begin in the immediate vicinity. But it was more than ten years after the first murder that anyone wanted to understand the real story. One learns of everyday racism, the – stunned – institutional racism of certain authorities, the failure of the protection of the constitution, the silence of the informants, from tabloid journalists who invented the “kebab murders”, from completely disappointed lawyers. The then head of the investigation called the family when the truth could no longer be overlooked. It was the only excuse. Many injured lives remained.