Marilyn Monroe
Fragments of a Soul
Katharine Mehrling and Tilmar Kuhn's new programme is a quest, a search for the real Norma Jeane Baker behind the myth that was Marilyn Monroe, someone who had nothing to do with the iconic actrice fétiche, a different Marilyn who wanted to shed the image of the seductive screen idol. In 1954, she set up her own production company in a bid to free herself from Hollywood's constraints and tried to find her identity and to discover the true art of acting by studying it with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York.
Her marriage to Arthur Miller, viewed by the world as a sensation, was overshadowed by Miller's clashes with McCarthy's House Committee on Un-American Activities. This period revealed Marilyn's deep inner conflict between her public image and inner truth. Truman Capote wrote that he once observed Marilyn standing in front of a mirror and 'looking at her' – that Monroe, this other person that was her own reflection. The eternal image of Monroe conceals a soul which hardly anyone knew.
In Antonio Tabucchi's opinion, Monroe's poetic journal entries reveal the soul of an intellectual, a poet with the vulnerability of a butterfly whose wings are at risk of being burnt by the light.
Whether on stage, in films or when performing her own songs – Katharine Mehrling is an actress, singer and songwriter who covers a wide spectrum of styles. She studied drama in New York, made her debut at the Old Vic Theatre in London and has worked in Paris and Berlin, where she regularly performs in theatres such as the Komische Oper, the Berliner Ensemble, the Renaissance Theater Berlin or the Konzerthaus Berlin. She frequently returns to Bar jeder Vernunft and Tipi am Kanzleramt with her solo evenings. One focus of her work lies on the repertoire of the Weimar Republic and the works of artists such as Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler, Werner Richard Heymann and Friedrich Hollaender.
Tilmar Kuhn trained at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF and has performed, for example, at the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater and the Staatstheater Braunschweig, as well as at theatres in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and so on, in roles such as Doctor Faustus or Don Carlos; he has played Tiger Brown in the Threepenny Opera, Bruno Mechelke in Hauptmann's The Rats, Riccardo Fontana in Hochhut's The Deputy and many others. Besides appearing in various series episodes and starring roles on TV, he can also be heard on the radio and is a regular guest on culture shows; he also organises readings. He records audio books and is also a voice actor. In addition, he narrates audio descriptions and commentaries for documentaries. He has already arranged several readings accompanied by music in cooperation with Katharine Mehrling (for example about Bert Brecht, Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya) and has also recorded a double disk CD: Werner Richard Heymann. Leben und Lieder.
