A Little Light. And All This Silence. (Ein wenig Licht. Und iese Ruhe.)

"The night before I entered the occupied territories, I saw a speech on TV by the government and military leaders. They had decided that we would contribute even more to GDP if we didn’t just consume robotic vacuum cleaners on the battlefield, but also cruise missiles. The battlefield where we slaughtered each other for land, mineral resources, power, borders. Stuff."

Sibylle Berg's new play is set in a future that feels unsettlingly like our present. When war breaks out in Europe between Liechtenstein and Luxemburg and is made mobile, an engineer who has also been drafted for military service slowly realises: maybe it was never possible to reconcile his queerness with his job in the arms industry after all. Sheltering somewhere from the nearby detonations, he starts researching: exploring the texture of thought that’s meant to be our world. Sibylle Berg's play is a tender monologue about the despair at our present times, whose discourses rotate incessantly like an idling engine – and about the fear of the returning militarisation of our society. Inspired by the photography field work of Canadian artist Jeff Wall, Sibylle Berg takes her place on the fault lines of our times. With music. And a little silence.

After "RCE" and "Es kann doch nur noch besser werden" ("Things Can Only Get Better"), "Ein Wenig Licht. Und diese Ruhe." ("A Little Light. And All This Silence.") will be the third play by Sibylle Berg performed at the Berliner Ensemble. The young director Dennis Nolden – who was an assistant director at the BE until the 2024/25 season – will stage Sibylle Berg's monologue as a solo with Peter Moltzen.