Critics have described the musical theatre ‘OPER OTZE AXT’ by the artist collective Dritte Degeneration Ost as a ‘gripping crossover’, which premiered its first site-specific development at the Musiktheater im Revier on 13 April following its world premiere at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. The sixth NOperas! production can be seen twice more – on 19 and 26 April – in Gelsenkirchen before a second site-specific version is developed at Theater Bremen. The premiere there will take place on 4 July.
‘OPER OTZE AXT’ is inspired by the story of the GDR punk band “Schleimkeim” and its singer and guitarist Dieter ‘Otze’ Ehrlich. In a musically exciting experiment in which opera and punk are combined through sound design, the young collective ‘Dritte Degeneration Ost’ explores the question of how to break up the system, the state and the opera. Otze experiences the increasingly disintegrating GDR as a resistant protagonist and East punk antihero, but finds no redemption in the social liberation of the fall of the Wall and the post-reunification period, only further invisible walls. The development of the play scrutinises our image and understanding of the post-reunification period and searches for new approaches to explain the political rifts that are occurring in ever more drastic ways in the present day. After more than thirty years of reunification, the seams between East and West are opening up again and calling into question the freedom we have achieved together.
The artists’ collective ‘Dritte Degeneration Ost’ has come together for the first time for a project in this constellation and under this name, sharing artistic responsibility for the production. The team is focussing on the idea of developing a collective piece on an equal footing. Almost all of the participants come from the ‘new federal states’. They combine their project with the reappraisal of personal experiences and thus create a special perspective on the German-German problem against the backdrop of the reunification years. The question of the nature of freedom is explored in a provocative way, beyond the context of the play, and provides an intelligent thematic contribution to pressing contemporary issues in the context of musical theatre.
