Developed in the Freiboxen format at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, in which ensemble members have the opportunity to present very personal projects and concerns with a short start-up time, the Theater im Bauturm is bringing the production "Selbstportrait zwischen Steppe und Wald" by Nikita Betekhtin and Alexei Lochmann back to the stage.

Director Nikita Betekhtin, who comes from Siberia, was forced to leave his homeland shortly after the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine due to political statements that had become dangerous. He has now been living in Berlin since the summer of 2023 and has found a new theater home at the Deutsches Theater for a year since the beginning of this season with a scholarship from the US Artist Protection Fund: he has sat in on productions, learned German and familiarized himself with the conditions of the German-speaking theater system.

However, the story of the actor Alexej Lochmann is the main focus of the film. His background is interesting - especially in the light of current political events - and not a little confusing: he was born in Qaranghandy in Kazakhstan and grew up in Hamburg in the 1990s as the child of a family of ethnic German immigrants with a Russian-German father and a Ukrainian-Russian mother. Alexej Lochmann's family was then, and still is today, challenged to constantly find and reinvent themselves, having to leave familiar places time and again, and despite this, or perhaps precisely because of this, they have always brought pieces of their old homeland with them to their new one. This evening is about the scattered nature of a family in all directions and across several countries and ideologies, about the events that triggered their moves and resettlements, about affiliations and cultural idiosyncrasies. - How many trees does it actually take for the steppe to become a forest?

Supported by the Cultural Office of the City of Cologne