James Brown trug Lockenwickler
('James Brown Wore Curlers')
by Yasmina Reza
A young man believes that he is Céline Dion. His white friend would like to be black. A female psychiatrist drives a car without ever using the brakes. A set of parents has reached a state of touching, helpless permanent discord, and a plant from the rainforest comes into conflict with the moderate European climate. These are the ingredients of this sharp and funny play about the current debates and misunderstandings between the genders and generations. Once again, the great French comedy of manners master Yasmina Reza lets social expectations and the bizarre reality clash in a wonderful, effortless and ironic way. The actors Imogen Kogge, Ulrich Noethen and Benjamin Radjaipour enter the whirlpool of Yasmina Reza's criticism of existence in the hub of our times. The Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper described it as 'a fragile play, veering between comedy and melancholy, certainty and uncertainty, identity and differences, culture and nature.'
Imogen Kogge was a member of the Berliner Schaubühne cast for over ten years, where she primarily starred in productions by Peter Stein, Andrea Breth, Klaus Michael Grüber and Luc Bondy. Her recent theatre work includes performances at the Salzburg Festival, at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. She also regularly appears in movies and TV productions such as Christian Schmidt's Requiem, for example, or as the stalwart detective Johanna Herz in the long-running TV crime series Polizeiruf 110, in Alone in Berlin, or in The Universal Theory.
Ulrich Noethen trained in Stuttgart and has won numerous awards, including the Deutscher Filmpreis German film prize for his performance in Comedian Harmonists, the prestigious Goldene Kamera film and television award in the 'Best German Actor' category, and the Grimme-Preis television award, which he has won twice. He has most recently appeared in the literary film adaptations The German Lesson and Unterleuten: The Torn Village as well as the TV film Louis van Beethoven.
Benjamin Radjaipour's stage work has included collaborations with Trajal Harrell, Susanne Kennedy, Christopher Rüping, Anta Helena Recke, Toshiki Okada, Leonie Böhm and Wu Tsang, for example. In the film area, he has collaborated closely with the collective 'Jünglinge', which was also responsible for Faraz Shariat's first, multi-award winning movie No Hard Feelings, in which Benjamin Radjaipour plays the role of Parvis. He is currently appearing in the medical drama series Berlin ER, as well as the series Black Fruit alongside its creator and star Lamin Leroy Gibba, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in 2024.
Performance rights: © Theaterverlag Desch, Felix Bloch Erben, Berlin
