Three aging, Afghan, affluent female vloggers from Kabul suffer shipwreck and end up on a dubious German boat that can talk and that gives Dadaist orders. The grannies have experienced a lot: the dominance of violence, attacks and destabilization and how violence breaks down limits. They counter the degradation of migration with fabulous vlogs as a subversion and transformation of the experience of death. To live at this edge, where all comprehension breaks down, is to live with sovereignty as an impossible experience that combines violence with freedom. 

Their messages are hard to decipher. They give instructions. They command. They sing. They want. They sulk. They rant. They dance. They seduce. They despair. They show off. They trick. They don’t give a damn. They try to say something about their situation. Something significant. Is it a signal? Is it a bird? 

‘Freedom is nothing if it is not the freedom to live at the edge of limits where all comprehension breaks down’ (Bataille). 

The birds. A live musical vlog theater evening in Dari based on Konrad Bayer’s The Birds.

A collaborative theatre production by Max Martens & Jana Papenbroock with the AZDAR Collective from Kabul, Weimar/Berlin 2018
A project by Kunstfest Weimar & the German National Theatre of Weimar.
Kindly supported by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, the Goethe Institute, bat-Studiotheater & the HfS Ernst Busch

With: Gulab Jan Bamik, Abdul Mahfoz Nejrabi, Sulaiman Sohrab Salem, Homan Wesa & Elke Wieditz
Text: Konrad Bayer
Concept & Direction: Max Martens & Jana Papenbroock
Sound Design: Paul Hauptmeier & Martin Recker

Premiere: April 25th, Berliner Arbeitertheater, further shows April 26th, 27th & 28t; April  30th and May 2nd 2018 at the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar

Review of the Thüringer Allgemeine