Karen Breece

Karen Breece writes and stages plays that she develops on the basis of intensive research and personal discussions. In addition to various projects that deal with the examination and reappraisal of German Nazi history, a second thematic focus of the American is the political present and projects that concentrate on discourses and questions of interculturality and identity against the background of a Germany and Europe in transition.Karen Breece's "documentary theater" is based on interviews with (contemporary) witnesses and - depending on the thematic location - directly affected persons. She transcribes these interviews and then overwrites them several times by re-contextualizing the statements through literary, political or philosophical references and associations. Through her approach of involving the audience by means of participatory structures and often working "site-specifically", i.e. consciously at connoted places in public space, Breece creates spaces for reflection that make the borderline between art and life appear blurred. In this way, principles of the documentary and the genre of documentary theater are reflected in their very foundations.
In her latest work "Oradour" (UA 2018), a co-production with the Münchner Kammerspiele, the director dealt with the difficulties of remembering and the impossibility of forgetting against the background of the SS massacre of Oradour. In her previous production "Don't Forget To Die" (UA 2017), a theater project about dying, five people between the ages of 74 and 94 dealt with their own death on stage. The production was shown again as a guest performance at the Münchner Kammerspiele in February 2018 and was also invited to the Festival Internationale Neue Dramatik FIND 2018 of the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin."Auf Der Straße" is the first work by Karen Breece at the Berliner Ensemble. On the basis of interviews and conversations with people from Berlin who are affected or threatened by homelessness or homelessness, as well as with people who are involved in helping the homeless or who are involved in politics or administration, she develops a theatrical text that is brought to the stage by actors from the Berliner Ensemble and homeless and homeless people together.