Zwischenfälle
('Incidents')
'I am interested only in 'nonsense'; only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestations.'
Daniil Kharms
At artist meetings, the Russian avant-garde writer Daniil Kharms behaved like a character from one of his writings: he often sat on top of a wardrobe with a green dog tattooed on his cheek and recited his texts from there. Full of bitter but comical irony, they mirror the absurdities of everyday life and the circumstances in Russia during times of major upheaval, during the country's transformation from tsardom to Soviet Republic and Stalinism. In light of the current situation in Russia, where, after its invasion of Ukraine, even holding up a blank sheet of paper in public, not to mention uttering words like 'war' or 'aggression', can get you arrested, the works of Daniil Kharms seem more relevant than ever before. Kharms, who was forced to live in constant fear of being dragged off by Stalin's secret police, was arrested several times. In the end, he starved to death in the psychiatric ward of a prison during the German siege of Leningrad.
In collaboration with the musician Ingo Günther, the actors Wolfram Koch and Werner Eng have developed a programme with texts written by Daniil Kharms that are full of desperation, yet at the same time wallow in a gloriously dark-humoured language. In the style of Beckett and Germany's master of dark comedy, Karl Valentin, his words inspire laughter, and a kind of fatalist mirth.
Wolfram Koch first appeared in a film at the age of only thirteen, the dramatisation of Heinrich Böll's The Clown, but then decided to focus on the theatre. He regularly performs on many of the German-speaking countries' great stages, appearing most recently at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Schauspiel Frankfurt theatre, for example. For Waiting for Godot at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, he and Samuel Finzi jointly won the Gertrud-Eysoldt-Ring prize in 2014. Koch's film work includes Summer Outside and King Ordinary. Wolfram Koch plays one of the detectives in the Frankfurt-based episodes of the long-running TV crime series Tatort, the other being played by Margarita Broich.
Werner Eng, who was born in Brazil, has worked with directors such as Sebastian Hartmann, Lukas Langhoff and Sebastian Baumgarten. He is one of the actors who collaborate intensively with Herbert Fritsch. Werner Eng has been a member of the Berliner Schaubühne company since 2017.
The cultural theorist, musician and composer Ingo Günther is one of the founders of the film score band die paramounts, with whom he has recorded several CDs. As a composer, he has collaborated with directors such as Jarg Pataki, Sebastian Baumgarten, Barbara Weber, Claudia Bauer Armin Petras and Herbert Fritsch.
