Katzelmacher

They are stuck in the provinces dreaming of escape. They cannot live with or without each other. They eye each other up and viciously gossip. Their boredom, envy and money troubles feed into their prejudices. Until their aggression erupts into violence against Jorgos who has come to Bavaria as a guest worker from Greece. With “Katzelmacher”, Fassbinder portrayed the social and cultural struggles of a suburban neighbourhood in Bavaria in the late 1960s.

Emre Akal, in collaboration with the artist duo Mehmet & Kazim, designs imaginative artificial play worlds for his productions, in which analogue and digital elements blur to create their own illusion. In “Katzelmacher”, he confronts memories of the mood, traditions and rituals from the time period of the text with our present. Inspired by Adorno’s studies of the authoritarian character, the production examines a recurring dynamic: people who feel humiliated go on to humiliate others in order to increase their self-esteem. In a specially written epilogue, Emre Akal addresses the closeness and distance between 1968 and 2025.

“The fact that the issues in ‘Katzelmacher’ are so timeless demonstrates how important it is to constantly continue to address them. Each generation faces their own versions of these social struggles. The question arises: are we capable of creating something new with old tools?”

– Emre Akal, director