With Rummelplatz, Theater Chemnitz is bringing an impressive opera adaptation of Werner Bräunig's novel to the stage. The world premiere combines contemporary history with current cultural events and invites the audience to engage intensively with the past and present.
At night on the fairground, everything comes together: the escape from dreary everyday life and hard work, the unleashing of desires and their numbing in intoxication. The swing at dead center, just before it tips over, the world is upside down - a moment of pause: where are these people supposed to go with themselves in post-war East Germany? War and fascism are in their bones, material hardship determines their everyday lives, an authoritarian regime wants to take control of them. But they still have dreams.
Werner Bräunig's Rummelplatz is more than just a "bismuth novel". His protagonists seek a place in the world, fall into responsibility and conflict, develop and yet cannot escape themselves. With his unvarnished realism, the author was targeted by SED functionaries.
Ludger Vollmer (composition) and the winner of the International Booker Prize 2024 Jenny Erpenbeck (libretto) are adapting the work for the opera stage for the first time. The world premiere will be accompanied by a participatory writing workshop and a conference that spans the arc from contemporary history to the Capital of Culture year 2025.
World premiere September 20, 2025
